I have been thinking about the following from Jung for a number of years.
... the principal aim of psychotherapy is not to transport the patient to an impossible state of happiness, but to help him acquire steadfastness and philosophic patience in face of suffering. Life demands for its completion and fulfillment a balance between joy and sorrow. *
This is not a message most people want to hear. It is tough to accept that suffering is part of life, that it is meaningful and unavoidable. It is hard for patients and often hard for therapists as well to stay with what is painful, to resist the urge to dart away into what is more comfortable, soothing, or easy. This way of understanding therapy also flies in the face of a feel-good orientation which seems to dominate American culture. We want to medicate, meditate or otherwise eliminate suffering, not face into it, sit in it and explore its meaning.
Someone once said to me, "I think I have never told any therapist, and I have had a number of them, some of my darkest secrets, which of course are the reasons I'm going to therapy in the first place.. I want a cure for the way I feel now." That's a pretty common attitude but it is ultimately self-defeating. As I wrote here, it is the secrets which isolate us and cut us off from what we most need and want. The "cure" for what a patient feels now is doing exactly what is so often resisted -- saying whatever comes to mind and being open and honest and willing to find the meaning in the suffering.
* Collected Works, Vol. 16, p.81