Psychotherapy - a 21st century approach

As much a personal education as therapeutic.  It's just good to talk openly about oneself with a responsive, disciplined and experienced other. Its dramatic, calming and useful. And important changes may result.

Basically the technique, the personality, and the setting of the therapist can help a person grow, and overcome the weaknesses in what is no longer or not yet adaptive .

A tricky business. My own approach is to blend observant meditation, spontaneous yoga/tai chi, and psychoanalysis, staying interactive and conversational. “The truth emerges from conversation among friends”, but the client is moving towards a personal belief and needs the opportunity at self discovery, not socialization.

Meditation creates a realm of freedom in the mind. the addition of yoga stirs up bodily states, which themselves are emotional, and these can lead to memories and current stresses. If the person has learned how to meditate, they can back up to that place of freedom as the psychological gets too intense.

Its not a mechanical process, but flexible, responsive, to the life of the person. We work on whatever is in the way, from legal, financial, biological or educational, of the person reaching their own ideals for a meaningful life with their wonderful unfolding personal stories, however terrible they seem.

The goal is the increased health, love and maturity of the person, with an increased ability to respond fully to the world and its needs and opportunities, and to the relationships encountered, inherited and created.

Its also fun, despite the pain.

see Psychotherapy, a 21st century approach

I've written a draft paper, Philosophical Psychotherapy

and see the papers at personal coaching

and quoted from a a paper by one of my teachers, Erich Fromm, Aspects of the therapeutic process