All the above terms describe a ‘talking therapy’ which takes place in a safe, private and confidential environment. Although there are some similarities between them, they vary in terms of meeting and what can be worked on. Counselling tends to focus on a particular difficulty or life event and may describe meetings over a shorter period of time. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Jungian psychoanalysis offer the opportunity to explore problems and difficulties at greater depth. These difficulties will probably have a much longer history and form part of someone’s personality and the way they relate to other people. It aims to help people gain a deeper understanding of their inner world and the way their experiences affect their relationships in the past and present. A significant aspect of both psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Jungian psychoanalysis is that the relationship with the therapist in the ‘here and now’ becomes a tool through which more buried and unconscious patterns of relating can be experienced, thought about and understood. It is through this process that deep and lasting change in the personality can occur.
To work at this depth, it can be helpful to meet more frequently than once a week, sometimes two or three times a week, or, in the case of analysis, four to five times a week. The frequency of meetings will always be discussed with the patient but more frequent sessions can be helpful when areas of particular difficulty need to be worked through.
