Crisis intervention through early interpretation of unconscious guilt.

The author describes an approach to crisis intervention based on the assumption that a crisis reconfirms a patient's unconscious pathogenic beliefs and increases unconscious guilt. The nature of the psychopathology can be understood in terms of the patient's history, current life problems, and testing of the therapist. Treatment involves offering the patient a dynamic evaluation that includes interpretation of the role of pathogenic beliefs and guilt in the crisis. This approach provides symptomatic relief and may lead to incipient personality change. Improvement may be due in part to the greater openness to change characteristic of persons in crisis. However, this approach seems effective primarily because patients are enabled to disconfirm their pathogenic beliefs and thereby reduce unconscious guilt.