INSIGHT-ORIENTED THERAPY

Insight-oriented therapy works out of the assumption that the better you know yourself, the better you will function. “Better functioning” includes symptom improvement and alleviation, along with improvement in your work, academic, social, romantic, and even athletic life. Insight-oriented therapy strives to teach you how and why you function in the ways you do, and to clarify your motivations. It shows you that you have an internal world, and it interprets how that internal world operates. It gives you self-knowledge. Most of all, it gives you freedom.

When you have freedom, you have power. You have a greater range of choices available to you in any given situation. Insight allows you to break free from old habits and patterns of behavior. It lets you choose new ones as you see fit. The goal of insight-oriented therapy is freedom at the deepest level.

Unconscious mental life is a core assumption in insight-oriented therapy. This means that there is a belief that your problems, symptoms, and general discomforts are rooted in, or caused by, something that is occurring inside you, but about which you do not yet know. The primary method of therapy becomes making the unconscious conscious. In this manner, you become free of the unknown blockages that prevent you from your best level of functioning.