ABSTRACT
What is regression? Regression is a return to an earlier mode of functioning—for example, a return to thoughts, feelings, and fantasies from childhood. It is also an especially useful element in the process of analytic psychotherapy for understanding the unconscious. What that means is that during the course of analytic psychotherapy we want to help the people we’re working with to regress in a way that will allow both of us to experience thoughts, feelings, and fantasies that they’ve encountered at earlier times, which could shed light on symptoms and character troubles that they are having now. We’re trying to provide them with a situation that allows them to regress safely, comfortably, and in a controlled way, enabling more access to those thoughts, feelings, and fantasies from the past. This regression allows a systematic exploration of their unconscious, which helps provide new, mature solutions to old, internal, intrapsychic conflict.
