Effectiveness of analytical psychotherapy

I have a particular interest in this type of therapeutic practice: It has been shown to be effective for treatment of a wide range of personal, emotional or behavioural difficulties. It can bring about deep-seated and sustainable change by working at depth with the experiences that the individual brings to treatment. The long term benefits are understood to be the result of individuals having come to a better understanding and acceptance of themselves; thus becoming able to manage their difficulties more constructively. Individuals will also have developed skills and ways of behaving that are more effective and adaptive; aspects of the personality that were hitherto under-expressed or under-used are often felt to have been strengthened and developed. 

Origins of analytical psychotherapy

Analytical Psychotherapy draws upon the work of Carl Jung. Jung was strongly influenced in his early career by the work of Sigmund Freud; accepting Freud’s, at the time, ground-breaking discovery that the behaviours and decisions of individuals may be powerfully influenced by unconscious thoughts and feelings of which the individual is unaware. 

Where Jung departed from Freud was in his view of the value of the unconscious: Freud emphasised the repressed and unacceptable nature of unconscious contents and the need to bring their childhood origins to light in order that they might be more properly managed. Jung however saw the unconscious as ‘resource full’; a reservoir of potential and a vital link to a shared and timeless experience of what it is to be human and to be in relationship with other humans.

Jung understood that the energy for living and towards growth and wholeness comes from deep within our being and that access to the resources of the unconscious is essential to our creativity and aliveness. Jung believed that the unconscious acts as counterweight to the conscious mind, seeking to guide each of us on our own unique path of self-development. He thought that if an individual’s life experience had caused communication between the unconscious and conscious to become disrupted, that at some point a crisis of emotional life would become inevitable.  

Jung saw constructive purposiveness in physical and psychological symptoms: He saw them as the efforts of an undervalued unconscious to communicate the need for change; a sign that the individual had strayed too far from their path of self-realisation and needed to make some adjustment to their life in order to reconnect with their whole and healthy self.

Analytical psychotherapy encourages particular attention to communications from the unconscious; to dreams, symptoms and emotions.  The therapeutic relationship provides opportunities for close attention to be paid to the individual; their story and their experiences past and present. A particular opportunity is created to explore the experience of the therapy situation itself and to experiment with different ways of being with another person. The secure and non-judgemental therapeutic space is an opportunity for new behaviours and for previously discarded aspects of one’s self to be tried out; a place for spontaneity and creativity to flourish.