The formula for changing is easy to describe; doing so is very difficult. One changes by changing. To change means that you have to risk changing from something familiar to something unfamiliar. Then libido (sexual energy) has to be directed by the will to push the passive self in the direction of the desired change.

Psychoanalysis, often referred to as the talking cure is aptly named, because much of the process is directed to having the patient say that which is felt or acted out. Thus, the operational definition of the talking cure equals making the unconscious conscious.

Significant psychological change is possible but resistance dogs the way.

The primary resistance to change is repetition compulsion – the need to repeat the familiar. Implied is a fear of the novel and the unknown.

Significant psychological change necessarily involves struggling with struggle.

Change is often experienced like Gulliver cutting the ties that bind him to the ground in Lilliput.

Change is often experienced like freeing oneself from a self-imposed prison cell.

Behavior is purposeful. Much of the purpose is unconsciously determined. Conscious fears mask partial unconscious wishes.

Change is often experienced as if one were on a complex psychological scavenger hunt where each clue is felt to be an increment of change.

Change rarely happens as a 'major break-through'; rather, it proceeds in small increments.

Change can be transforming, like the process which enables a caterpillar to eventually transform into a butterfly.

Change is often experienced like a flower unfolding.

Change allows a person to move from negative reverberation oscillation (chaos) to positive reverberation oscillation (ressonance).

Change is moving from compulsively or impulsively reacting to acting from within.

Change enables a person to move from narrow choices of 'either/or' to an expanded 'and' (a choice of alternatives).

Change is often experienced as moving from assimilation (new wine in old bottles) to accommodation (new wine in new bottles).

Anything worth accomplishing is as difficult as it is rare.