Final answer:
Psychoanalysis, developed by Sigmund Freud, encourages patients to reflect on their problems, dreams, and memories to gain insight into their difficulties by accessing the unconscious mind.
Step-by-step explanation:
The approach that encourages patients to think about their problems, dreams, and memories in order to gain insight into their own difficulties is psychoanalysis. Developed by Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis is a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Freud's theory of psychoanalysis focuses on the unconscious mind and suggests that understanding the unconscious is essential to understand conscious behavior. This method utilizes techniques like dream analysis, free association, and examination of slips of the tongue to access the unconscious mind.
Freud's psychoanalytic theory remained a dominant force in clinical psychology for several decades and was influential in understanding the unconscious mind's role in affecting conscious behavior and personality. Freud believed that dreams allow us to peek into our unconscious and that through interpreting these dreams, we can understand our deeper, sometimes repressed, emotions and thoughts.