Experiential therapy

In this form of psychotherapy the therapist and the individual enter into a special kind of relationship of which the most therapeutically significant is recognized as a form of joint fantasy experience in which each is responding maximally to the unconscious of the other. The individual deepens his symbolic involvement with the therapist, whilst the therapist sees the patient (emotionally) as the child-self of the therapist. Because the needs of the therapist are intra personal, this leads him to achieve a better integration of his own self through the individual as his child-image of himself. The therapist then feels an urgency and significance in the acceleration of the growth of the individual, for whom greater continuity is established through the stabilized joint fantasy, and an increased capacity for the realization of biological needs. The psychotherapeutic focus is concentrated on growth and maturity in the sense of integration of the biological effects of previous experiences on the organization of current experience, perceived as essentially emotional rather than analytical and logically causal (namely id processes rather than ego-level processes).