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What is also exciting about contemporary therapy is that the patient can see change as it occurs from the inside-out.

“Neuroscience is the hottest field in psychiatry/psychology today,” says Sarah Lawrence’s Drucker, who is also a member of the college’s Child Development Institute faculty group and trained as a psychoanalyst.

Using before and after brain scans, patients can observe how psychotherapy is changing not only the way they feel but how their brains are working.

Along with a holistic approach to medicine and a willingness on the part of mental health professionals to strike a balance between drug and talk therapies, Drucker says, neuroscience is giving our action- and results-oriented culture a reason to be less skeptical of what was once called “the talking cure.”

Education is also key in showing the public that there’s no reason not to be, ahem, Jung at heart.

“People have an innate need to grow,” Boksenbaum says. “Everyone can benefit from therapy. It frees our energy up for us to be more creative.”