Most forms of psychotherapy are rooted in psychoanalytical concepts. Although the majority of psychotherapists and counsellors do not comply with the classical Freudian model – they do not see their clients four or five times a week nor do they sit behind them while they are lying on a couch – they accept the basic psychoanalytical project. This can perhaps be expressed in the following way: unacceptable ‘instinctual’ wishes are warded off and ‘repressed’ into the ‘unconscious’. When they try to return to consciousness, they have to do so in disguise – and a common disguise is that of a symptom. This symptom has to be demasked, so to speak – what has been unconscious has to be made conscious for the symptom to disappear. This is, of course, an over-simplified account, but it is, I think, the essence of the psychoanalytical process and has remained central to psychotherapeutic endeavour.