APPLICATION: THE THERAPEUTIC

TECHNIQUES AND PROCEDURES

By: Marvic Joy N. Ferrer

 The therapy is geared more to limited objectives than to restructuring one’s
personality
 The therapist is less likely to use the couch
 There are fewer sessions each week
 There more frequent use of supportive interventions such as reassurance,
expressions of empathy and support, and suggestions
 There is more emphasis on the here-and-now relationship between therapist
and client.
 There is more latitude for therapist self-disclosure without “polluting the
transference”
 Less emphasis is given to the therapist”s neutrality
 There is a focus on mutual transference and countertransference enactments
 The focus is more on pressing practical concerns than on working with fantasy
material.
The techniques of psychoanalytic therapy are aimed at
increasing awareness, fostering insights into client’s
behavior and understanding the meanings of
symptoms. The therapy proceeds to the client’s talk
to catharsis (or expression of emotion), to insight, to
working through unconscious material. This work is
done to attain the goals of intellectual and emotional
understanding and reeducation, which, it is hoped,
will lead to personality change.
THE SIX BASIC TECHNIQUES OF PSYCHOANALYTIC
THERAPY

1.) MAINTAINING THE ANALYTIC FRAMEWORK

- Refers to the whole range of procedural and stylistic factors, such
as the analyst’s relative anonymity, maintaining neutrality and
objectivity, the regularity and consistency of meetings, starting
and ending the sessions on time, clarity on fees, and basic
boundary issues such as the avoidance of advice giving or
imposition of the therapist values (Curtis & Hirsch, 2011). One
of the most
2.) FREE ASSOCIATION
- is a central technique in psychoanalytic therapy, and it plays a key role in the
process of maintaining the analytic framework. In free association, clients are
encourage to say whatever comes to mind, regardless of how painful, silly ,
trival, illogical or irrelevant it may seem. In essence, clients try to flow with any
feelings or thoughts by reportingthem immediately without censorship.

- it is one of the basic tools used to open the doors unconscious wishes, fantasies,
conflicts and motivations. This technique often leads to recollection of past
experiences abd at times, a catharsis or release of intense feeling that have been
blocked. This release is not seen as crucial in itself, however. During the free
association process, the therapist’s task to identify the repressed material that is
locked in the unconscious.

- As analytic therapists listen to their client’s free associations, they hear not only
the surface content but the also the hidden meaning. Nothing the client says is
taken at face value.
3.) INTERPRETATION
- Consist of analyst’s pointinng out, explaining and even teaching the client the
meanings of behavior that is manifested in dreams, free association, resistances
and the therapeutic relationship itself. The functions of interpretations are to
enable the ego to assimilate new material and to speed up the process of
uncovering unconscious material.

- Includes identifying, clarifying, and translating the clients material

- A general rule is that interpretation should be presented when phenomenon to

be interpreted is close to conscious awareness, in other words the therapist
should interpret material that th`e client has not yet seen but is capable of
tolerating and incorporating.

- Another general rule is that interpretation should start from the surface and go
only as deep as the client is able to go.
4.) DREAM ANALYSIS
- An important procedure in uncovering unconscious materialand
giving the client insight into some areas of unresolved problems.
During sleep, defenses are lowered and represses feelings surface.
Freud sees dreams as the “royal road to unconscious,” for in them
one’s unconscious wishes, needs, and fears are expressed in disguised
or symbolic form rather than being revealed directly

- TWO LEVELS OF DREAM

*Latent Content- consist of hidden, symbolic and unconscious motives,
wishes, and fears.
*Manifest Content- dream as is apperance to the dreams. The process by
which the latent of a dreamed is transformed into the less threatening
manifest content called dream work.
5.) ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETAION OF
RESISTANCE
Resistance is a concept fundamental to the practice of
psychoanalysis, is anything that works against the
progress of therapy and prevents the client from
producing previously unconscious material.
- Refers to any idea, attitude, feeling or action (conscious or
unconscious) that fosters the status quo and gets in the
way of change.
6.) ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF
TRANSFERENCE
- The transference situation is considered valuable
because its manifestations provide clients with the
opportunity to reexperience a variety of feelings that
otherwise would be inaccessible.
- Is a central technique in psychoanalysis and
psychoanalytically oriented therapy, for it allows
clients to achieve here-and-now insight into the
influence of the past on their present functioning.
APPLICATION TO GROUP
COUNSELING

Psychodynamic model offers a conceptual framework

for understanding the history of the members of a
group in a way of thinking about how their past is
affecting them now in the group in their everyday
lives. Group leaders can think psychoanalytically,
even if they not use many psychoanalytical
techniques. Regardless of their theoretical
orientation, it is well for group therapists to
understand such psychoanalytic phenomena as
transference, countertransference, resistance, and
the use of ego-defense mechanisms as reaction to
anxiety.
JUNG’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF
PERSONALITY

Jung’s analytical psychology is an elaborate

explanation of human nature that combines
ideas from history, mythology, anthropology
and religion (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). Jung
made monumental contrinutions to our deep
ubderstanding of the human personality and
personal development, particularly during
middle age.
For Jung, our present personality is shaped both by who and what we have been
and also by what we aspire to be in the future. His theory is based on the
assumption that humans tend to move toward the fulfillment or realization of
all their capabilities.

Individuation- the harmonious integration of the conscious and unconscious

aspects of personality- is an innate and primary goal.

Collective unconscious- the “deepest level of the psyche containing the

accumulation of inherited experiences of human and prehuman species” (as
cited in Schultz & Schultz, 2009, p. 109) Jung saw a connection between each
person’s personality and the past, not only childhood events but also history of
species.

Archetypes- The image of universal experiences contained in the collective

unconscious.
Persona- is a mask, or public face, that we wear to
protect ourselves.

The animus and the anima represent both the

biological and psychological aspects of masculinity
and femeninity, which are thought to coexist in both
sexes.

Shadow- has the deepest roots and is the most

dangerous and powerful archetypes.
CONTEMPORARY TRENDS: OBJECT-RELATIONS THEORY, SELF-
PSYCHOLOGY, AND RELATIONAL PSYCHOANALYSIS

Ego psychology- is a part of classical psychoanalysis with the

emphasis placed on the vocabulary of id, ego and superego,
and on Anna Freud’s identification of defense mechanisms.

Object-relations theory- encompases the work of a number of

rather different psychoanalytic theorists.

Self-psychology- which grew out of the work of Heinz Kohut

(1971), emphasizes how we use interpersonal relationships (self
objects) to develop our own sense of self.

The relational model is based on the assumption that therapy is

an interactive process between client and therapist.
The task of the analysis is to explore each client’s life
in a creative way, customized to the therapist and
client working together in a particular culture at
a particular moment in time.