Insight-Oriented Psychotherapy

Insight-oriented psychotherapy is a category of psychotherapies sharing the assumption that psychological symptoms and maladaptive patterns of behavior arise, at least in part, from a limited awareness of one's own motivations, emotions and relational patterns, and that increased self-understanding, or insight, is a central mechanism of therapeutic change; insight in this sense means a patient's understanding of the associations between past and present experience, recurring relationship patterns, and the connections among interpersonal challenges, emotional experience and psychological symptoms. Approaches commonly classed as insight-oriented include psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, existential therapy, person-centered therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy, along with integrative treatments drawing on these traditions; such therapies are typically distinguished from supportive psychotherapies, which prioritize reinforcing a patient's existing coping mechanisms and adaptive functioning over uncovering unconscious or out-of-awareness material, though in clinical practice the two approaches are often combined.