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The ego activation method is a psychoanalytically oriented approach that restructures the therapeutic encounter by integrating real problems with genuine risks into the traditional therapy session (see Weiner, 1975, 1979). The therapy session is structured as a slice of reality in which the patient has not only to understand his past and unconscious dynamics, but to struggle with and master challenging problems in the here-and-now.1 In addition to exploring his feelings, perceptual and thought processes, memories, dreams, and transference, the patient is systematically engaged in a variety of specially devised perceptual conflicts and problem-solving activities which evoke the anxieties and distortions of his current dilemmas. Interpretive interventions encompass not only the patient's associative material and the transference, but the patient's problem-solving activities within the therapy sessions.
In traditional analytically oriented therapy, the therapy session becomes a microcosm of the patient's neurosis in which