Exposure therapy allows the patient to confront the memories that account for their distress. Psychoanalysis allows the therapist to determine the interaction between the unconscious and conscious mind in order to bring back restrained thoughts. Cognitive processing therapy helps the patient to properly process emotions about the unforgettable event and allows them to learn how to control their thinking patterns. Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD is a very common disorder that can occur after many events.
Freud was the founding father of ppsychoanalysis,a method for treating mental illness and also a theory which explains human behavior (McLeod 2013). Psychoanalysis is a therapeutic method where the therapist probes deeply into the patient's memory, in attempt to make the patient's mind conscious and aware of the unconscious' repressed thoughts, in the hope that if the patient's conscious mind could be made aware of the unconscious and tracing its repressed thoughts all the way to childhood memories (McLeod 2007). Psychoanalysis is a very lengthy and time consuming process, requiring anywhere from two to five sessions per week for a period of a few years. The specialized therapist, a psychoanalyst, uses numerous techniques to encourage the patient in developing their own insight into their behavior. The techniques of therapy include Rorschach ink blots, Freudian slip and Free Association (McLeod 2007).
Rorschach ink blots are ambiguous, and what matters is what the patient sees among the splattered ink. If a patient sees an image war or gun related, then the patient might have suffered from a severe case of PTSD from war or a terrorism experience. The Freudian Slip is when unconscious emotions and thoughts transfer to the conscious mind by slips of the tongue. For example, if one accidentally calls their partner a name of a previous one, it hints that they favored the previous one more.
