Freud believed personality and behaviour come from the unique interaction of conflicting psychological forces that operate on different levels of awareness: the preconscious, conscious and unconscious. He believed these play an important role in behaviour. During therapy, we tap into our unconscious mind to discover more.
How Therapy Works
Therapy is often referred to as a relationship. It’s an approach that focuses on the relationship between the therapist and client to work through their behavioural and psychological issues. During this relationship, the therapist will consider the client’s past and current relationships, their race, gender, sexuality and much more to ensure the client feels understood and revived.
The therapist will encourage the client to speak as freely and openly as possible and will listen to the client’s words, actions and behaviours to feed back their understanding or interpretations.
From the therapist’s training, they will be able to find patterns, words and emotions that arise for the client and how the client relates to them. When something useful has been understood by the therapist, they will share their findings.
Therapy and The Unconscious Mind
During therapy, therapists may be able to understand things without the client consciously knowing. This can be more helpful to the client; however, many find this unnerving. We assure you; this is essential in interpreting your emotions and behaviours effectively.
In our unconscious mind, there are repressed thoughts and memories and things we don’t want to know about ourselves. Although these things are known at a certain level, we use a great amount of energy trying not to know.
How We Can Help
During therapy, one of the things we will explore is the interplay between your conscious and unconscious mind. This may cause internal conflicts in the way you process thoughts and emotions. Getting to understand the unconscious parts of ourselves may be scary, but it can be a relief to know and accept these parts. Although you may think these are bad parts of yourself, they are usually normal human characteristics.
We will explore your inner conflicts and unexpressed or repressed emotions to more easily understand why they have become so ingrained.
Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is a collective of experienced psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors working with a range of client groups, including fellow therapists and health professionals. If you would like more information, or an informal discussion please get in touch. Online therapy is available.
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