Psychodynamic psychotherapy

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511543579.084

Psychodynamic psychotherapy

from Psychology, health and illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2014

Edited by

John Weinman and

Jo-Anne Carlyle: Affiliation:
Tavistock Clinic
Susan Ayers: Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Andrew Baum: Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Chris McManus: Affiliation:
St Mary's Hospital Medical School
Stanton Newman: Affiliation:
University College and Middlesex School of Medicine
Kenneth Wallston: Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing
John Weinman: Affiliation:
United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's
Robert West: Affiliation:
St George's Hospital Medical School, University of London

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Summary

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What sets the psychodynamic psychotherapies apart from other traditions of psychological therapy is centrality of a dynamic unconscious. It is not only taken as fact that there are large parts of our psychological life of which we are unaware but also that there is a level of dynamic activity in these unconscious processes which contributes to our emotional and behavioural life (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973). This idea takes us beyond a notion of a static unconscious where previous thoughts or experiences are ‘laid down’ in a way that is isolated from relationships with other experiences. It refers to processes whereby aspects of emotional life, particularly conflicts between different instincts, feelings and thoughts, actively impinge on one another. The product or evidence of this activity may be in dreams or symptoms. Shakespeare, who so often anticipates our understanding of the mind, puts it eloquently thus:

And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection,

I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself,

that of yourself which you yet know not of.

(William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene II)

Although Freud is recognized as the modern founder of psychoanalysis (on which the psychodynamic therapies are based), the principles and foundations of psychodynamic theory are revealed in many of the compelling and elemental stories which have endured throughout history, from religious texts to the role of myths, as universal means of describing the experience of society and the individual.

Type: Chapter
Information: Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine , pp. 379 - 383

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543579.084 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2007

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Psychodynamic psychotherapy

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