Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

• The primary goal of psychodynamic psychotherapy is to make the unconscious conscious by helping clients become aware of their unaware thoughts, feelings, and mental activities.
• Psychodynamic psychotherapists use techniques like free association, Freudian slips, and dream analysis to understand unconscious motivations.

Free Association

• Free association is a technique where clients say whatever comes to mind without censoring themselves, allowing psychodynamic psychotherapists to hypothesize about unconscious activity.

Freudian Slips

• Freudian slips are verbal or behavioral mistakes that can't be explained by conscious motivations, suggesting unconscious motivations are the cause.
• Psychodynamic psychotherapists believe that all behavior is determined, and there is no such thing as a random mistake, accident, or slip.

Dreams

• Psychodynamic psychotherapists believe that dreams communicate unconscious material, and can reveal unconscious wishes in a distorted or disguised form through dream work.
• Dreams are referred to as the "royal road" to unconscious material.

Resistance

• Resistance refers to a client's unconscious efforts to avoid or hinder the exploration of certain thoughts, emotions, or experiences that are causing them anxiety or discomfort.
• Resistance can be recognized when a client "strikes a nerve" or becomes uncomfortable during therapy.

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological strategies used to manage conflicts between the id's impulses and the superego's demands for restraint.
• Defense mechanisms include repression, denial, projection, reaction formation, displacement, and sublimation, which serve to protect the individual from anxiety and distress.

Transference

• Transference is the unconscious tendency for clients to project feelings, expectations, and assumptions from past relationships onto their therapist.
• Transference is generally regarded as the most important focus of psychodynamic psychotherapy and is seen as the most powerful tool.

Fixation

• Fixation is the concept that individuals may become emotionally "stuck" at a particular stage of development, leading to ongoing struggles with issues related to that stage throughout their lives.

Psychoanalytic Stages of Development

• The oral stage is characterized by issues of dependency, with mismanagement by parents leading to fixation and issues with dependency in adulthood.
• The anal stage is characterized by control, with overly demanding parents leading to obsessive and compulsive tendencies, and overly lenient parents leading to lax organization.
• The phallic stage is characterized by children's desire for a special, close relationship with parents, which profoundly impacts their self-worth.