According to Freud, we often ward off anxiety and other unpleasant emotions with defenseve mechanisms, which work through self-deception. Freud believed that the first five years of life are extremely influential in shaping adult personality. Repression is thought to be a major reason for psychological problems. The task of therapy is to make unconscious influences on feelings and behavior conscious by the methods of free association and dream analysis. Therapy includes helping the person overcome resistance to coping more reasonably with their problems and also with transference problems.
Therapy encourages insight and catharsis.
Carl Rogers focused on the self-concept as the critical aspect of personality. Maslow theorized that our needs are arranged hierarchically. He asserted that psychological health depends on fulfilling our need for self-actualization. The therapy is client centered, it involves a process of clarification, and reflection of the content and feelings of the client's statements. Pavlov's classical conditioning can explain how we acquire emotional responses.