Psychodynamic Psychotherapy is one of the talking therapies, it is also known as psychodynamic counselling. It is a therapeutic approach to treatment that utilises the different analytical psychotherapies including the works of Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Sigmund Freud, John Bowlby and more.

 

Psychodynamic therapy aims to bring the unconscious into the consciousness which hopefully helps people to understand their deep rooted feelings which may be impacting on the present time. Often people wonder why they fall for the same kind of partner or find themselves repeating patterns of behaviour even though they know they are unhelpful, this is where psychodynamic psychotherapy can play an important role, in helping people to understand the reasons for the actions in the current moment and how these may be linked back to feelings from the past.

 

Thoughts and feelings in our childhood can play a major part in our adult life and can cause significant distress, with the help of a fully trained psychodynamic psychotherapist the past can be revisited in a safe environment in order that these historic feelings can be worked through with the aim that they will no longer hold as much power in the present and future.

 

This style of therapy helps to understand the underlying reasons for distress and to help people to find new ways of managing difficulties. Therapy can be short or long term, some people chose to enter psychodynamic psychotherapy in order to develop more self awarenbess and not necessarily for help with specific issues.

 

What to expect from Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

 

Therapy usually is conducted weekly and can be open ended meaning that there is no fixed end to the therapy sessions, however this can be reviewed and changed at any time during therapy. The therapist will often let the client free associate, which means that they speak freely without judgment and the client can talk about whatever comes into his or her mind at any time. The therapist will often make connections about what is being spoken about to other areas of the clients' life helping to see how some of todays feelings have been influenced by past events.

 

This style of therapy often is more about the client finding new ways of coping and new patterns of behaviour rather than the therapist telling them how to be.

 

Some therapists may bring some elements of psychodynamic psychotherapy and use other methods as well such as CBT and person centred therapy