Insight therapies or insight-oriented therapy relies on conversation between the therapist and the client. It helps people through understanding and expressing feelings, motivations, beliefs, fears and desires. Insight-oriented psychotherapy can be a long process. As insight-oriented psychotherapy is a client centered therapy, it is assumed that the client is healthy and their problem is a result of faulty-thinking.
During the therapy, the patient talks about what is on their mind and
the therapist looks for patterns in situations in which the patient
might feel stress or anxiety.
Patients typically wish to explore their anxiety more deeply because of a belief that deeper exploration will lead to change.
Psychodynamic therapy is a form of depth psychology,
the primary focus of which is to reveal the unconscious content of a
client's psyche in an effort to alleviate psychic tension.
In this way, it is similar to psychoanalysis.
It also relies on the interpersonal relationship between client and
therapist more than other forms of depth psychology. In terms of
approach, this form of therapy uses psychoanalysis adapted to a less
intensive style of working, usually at a frequency of once or twice per
week. Principal theorists drawn upon are Freud, Klein and theorists of
the object relations movement, eg. Winnicott, Guntrip, and Bion. Some
psychodynamic therapists also draw on Jung.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapy developed by Francine Shapiro, which emphasizes disturbing memories as the cause of psychopathology
and alleviates the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). EMDR is used for individuals who have experienced severe trauma which remains unresolved.
According to Shapiro, when a traumatic or distressing experience
occurs, it may overwhelm normal cognitive and neurological coping
mechanisms. The memory and associated stimuli are inadequately
processed, and stored in an isolated memory network.
The goal of EMDR therapy is to process these distressing memories,
reducing their lingering effects and allowing clients to develop more
adaptive coping mechanisms. This is done in an eight-step protocol that
includes having clients recall distressing images while receiving one of
several types of bilateral sensory input including side to side eye
movements.
The use of EMDR was originally developed to treat adults suffering from
PTSD, however, it is also used to treat other conditions and children
Existential therapy is a philosophical method of therapy
that operates on the belief that inner conflict within a person is due
to that individual's confrontation with the givens of existence.
These givens, as noted by Irvin D. Yalom, are: the inevitability of death, freedom and its attendant responsibility, existential isolation, and finally meaninglessness.
These four givens, also referred to as ultimate concerns, form the body
of existential psychotherapy and compose the framework in which a
therapist conceptualizes a client's problem in order to develop a method
of treatment. In the British School of Existential therapy (Cooper,
2003), these givens are seen as predictable tensions and paradoxes of
the four dimensions of human existence, the physical, social, personal
and spiritual realms (Umwelt, Mitwelt, Eigenwelt and Überwelt).
Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that studies the transpersonal, self-transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human experience. Transpersonal experiences may be
defined as "experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends
beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of
humankind, life, psyche or cosmos".
Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual, self development, self beyond the ego, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance and other sublime and/or unusually expanded experiences of living.
