Psychoanalytic Therapy
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy focuses on the unconscious and believes it influences human behaviour. It is believed that a person is driven by aggressive and sexual impulses. It focuses mainly on the first six years of human life and how the events of this time period determine later personality. Repressed conflicts from childhood lead to personality problems later in life. Anxiety is a direct result of the repression of conflicts.
Psychoanalysts believe that unconscious motives along with unresolved conflicts lead to maladapted behaviour. They believe that to develop a normal personality, a person must successfully go through five psychosexual stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital. Inadequate resolution of any of these stages leads to flawed personality development.
The client with the therapists help will make repressed conflicts conscious, making the unconscious conscious. Making these conflicts conscious to the client will help them in working through them.