Although there is diversity in psychoanalytic theory and treatment today, several beliefs cut across these different perspectives:
1. An assumption that all human beings are motivated in part by wishes, fantasies or tacit knowledge that are outside of awareness (this is referred to as unconscious motivation).
2. An interest in facilitating awareness of unconscious motivations, thereby increasing choice.
3. An emphasis on exploring the ways in which we avoid painful or threatening feelings, fantasies and thoughts.
4. An assumption that we are ambivalent about changing and an emphasis on the importance of exploring this ambivalence.
5. An emphasis on using the therapeutic relationship as an arena for exploring clients’ self-defeating psychological processes and actions (both conscious and unconscious).
6. An emphasis on using the therapeutic relationship as an important vehicle of change.
7. An emphasis on helping clients to understand the way in which their own construction of their past and present plays a role in perpetuating their self-defeating patterns.