Rounding out my approach is Psychodynamic Therapy. This form of psychotherapy emphasizes the importance of the unconscious mind and the influence of early life experiences on an individual’s psychological and emotional functioning. This therapeutic is related to the treatment approach developed by Sigmund Freud. Still, it has evolved and been adapted to allow for more growth, change, and evolution than the original approaches. The psychodynamic therapy techniques I use are powerful and effective when there is a good fit between what my client is looking for and this approach. This post goes over psychodynamic treatment to help you become an informed consumer.
Psychodynamic Therapy is not for everyone. It is usually a longer-term exploration, not as scientifically based, and specifically solution-focused. However, many people find psychodynamic treatment quite powerful and effective. I use it in my practice as a stand-alone therapy, and, more commonly, I use techniques like the ones in the psychodynamic therapy examples below as a part of an eclectic mix of approaches.
What is Psychodynamic Therapy
The following are the basic tenets of Psychodynamic Treatment:
Unconscious Processes in Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic treatment explores the unconscious aspects of a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It assumes that many psychological issues and conflicts originate in the unconscious mind. Issues may get stuck there, out of awareness, but still affect your mood and thoughts, and uncovering these motivations can be key to feeling more content.
The Role of the Past in Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy techniques are based on the assumption that a person’s past, particularly early childhood experiences and relationships, is crucial for understanding their current emotional and interpersonal difficulties. While modern psychodynamic therapy does not get stuck in the past and allows for the possibility of overcoming difficult experiences, it still relies on exploring the past to understand the present.
Transference and Countertransference
These are essential concepts in psychodynamic therapy. Transference refers to your unconscious feelings and attitudes toward the therapist, which can shed light on their past relationships. Countertransference is the therapist’s emotional reactions and responses to the patient, which can also provide insights.
Defense Mechanisms
Psychodynamic treatment explores individuals’ defense mechanisms to protect themselves from anxiety and emotional distress. Common defense mechanisms include repression, denial, projection, and displacement. Knowing the defense mechanisms you use can be vital in decreasing stress and conflict in your life.
Psychodynamic Treatment is Open-Ended
Sessions in psychodynamic therapy are typically open-ended and exploratory, while I provide a non-directive, empathetic, and supportive environment in which you can freely express your thoughts and emotions. Other types of therapy have more structure and direction.
What is Psychodynamic Therapy Used For?
The following outlines the primary ways I use psychodynamic therapy in my integrative practice, whether mixed with other methods or as a primary approach.
Insight and Self-awareness
Psychodynamic therapy aims to help you gain insight into your unconscious processes and how they impact your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This self-awareness can lead to personal growth and more adaptive ways of coping with life’s challenges. Psychodynamic treatment helps individuals gain insight into their unconscious thoughts and feelings. This can be particularly useful for uncovering repressed emotions, unresolved conflicts, and deep-seated motivations contributing to current issues.
Treatment of Longer-Term Issues
Some issues have been around for a long time and may require a more extended approach like psychodynamic therapy. These disorders include dysthymia (long-term mild depression) and social anxiety. This treatment can also help you improve your self-esteem by addressing underlying issues contributing to low self-worth.
Psychodynamic Therapy for Resolving Past Trauma
Psychodynamic therapy is often used to help you process and heal from past traumatic experiences. By delving into the roots of trauma, clients can work through unresolved feelings and achieve a greater sense of closure. This can be beneficial for individuals coping with grief and loss. It allows them to explore their grief and understand the impact of the loss on their emotional well-being.
Exploring Interpersonal Relationships
Psychodynamic treatment can be effective in examining the dynamics of personal relationships. By understanding how past experiences influence current patterns of relating to others, you can work on improving their interactions and forming healthier connections. For this reason, this method can be used in couples therapy and family treatment.
Managing Emotions and Stress with Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy can help you learn to manage and regulate your emotions more effectively. This is particularly valuable for anxiety, depression, and stress-related issues. By addressing and processing deep-seated emotional issues, psychodynamic therapy techniques can help you become more emotionally resilient and better equipped to cope with life’s challenges.
Psychodynamic Therapy to Build Self-Awareness
These methods aim to gain insight into the unconscious and promote personal growth and emotional well-being. Self-exploration can help you better understand your personality, desires, and values. This increased self-awareness can lead to personal growth and positive changes. Many people find that this approach is empowering and creates lasting change.
Psychodynamic Therapy Techniques
This treatment is a form of depth psychology that focuses on the unconscious processes manifest in a person’s behavior. Psychodynamic therapy techniques aim to help clients gain insight into their unconscious conflicts and motivations, often stemming from childhood experiences, to resolve them and achieve personal growth. Here are some key psychodynamic therapy techniques:
Major Psychodynamic Therapy Techniques
The main methods I use include:
1. Free Association
- You are encouraged to speak freely about whatever comes to mind without censorship or judgment. This process allows unconscious thoughts and feelings to emerge, providing insights into your inner world.
2. Interpretation
- I help you interpret your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and dreams. These interpretations aim to make unconscious material conscious and help you understand the underlying meaning of their experiences.
3. Dream Analysis
- Dreams are considered to be a window into the unconscious. You and I work together to explore the symbolism and meaning of your dreams, which can reveal hidden conflicts and desires.
4. Transference and Countertransference
- Transference: You naturally project feelings and attitudes from past relationships onto me. This can provide valuable insight into your relational patterns and unresolved issues.
- Countertransference: My emotional reactions to you can provide important information about your dynamics and can be used to further the therapeutic process.
5. Exploration of Defenses
- I help you understand your defense mechanisms (e.g., denial, repression, projection) that protect them from uncomfortable feelings and thoughts. Understanding these defenses can help you develop healthier ways of coping.
6. Resistance Analysis
- Resistance occurs when you unconsciously avoid discussing certain topics or feelings. I identify and interpret these resistances to help you understand what they might be avoiding and why.
Less Common Methods
Depending on your needs, I might also provide:
1. Working Through
- This involves revisiting and reinterpreting the same issues multiple times from different angles. The process helps you integrate new insights into your everyday lives and make lasting changes.
2. Catharsis
- The release of pent-up emotions through talking about past traumatic experiences. This can lead to emotional relief and a deeper understanding of the impact of these experiences.
3. Confrontation
- I might challenge your thoughts, feelings, or behaviors, helping you face difficult truths about yourself. This is done in a supportive way to encourage self-exploration and growth.
These psychodynamic therapy techniques are often combined and tailored to the client’s needs. The therapeutic relationship is also key, providing a safe space to explore deep-seated issues.
Who Benefits from Psychodynamic Treatment
Psychodynamic therapy techniques have benefited a range of individuals facing barriers and challenges. It is usually a longer-term approach, so I do not typically use it for brief solution-focused needs or when you seek fast results. The results of psychodynamic treatment can be profound and significant, but they may be less measurable than with other approaches. I can borrow from psychodynamic treatment with families with older children and in couples approaches, though it is not likely to be my primary method.
Psychodynamic Therapy in Practice
Psychodynamic therapy may be particularly helpful for:
- Individuals with Long-standing Issues: Psychodynamic therapy is often used for people dealing with long-standing psychological issues, such as chronic anxiety, depression, or interpersonal difficulties that have roots in early life experiences.
- Exploring Unconscious Processes: This approach is suitable for those interested in delving into unconscious processes and gaining insight into how past experiences shape present thoughts and behaviors.
- Complex Issues: Psychodynamic therapy is effective for complex psychological issues that may have multiple layers and roots. It allows individuals to explore and understand the deeper meanings behind their thoughts and actions.
- People Open to Self-Exploration: Individuals open to self-reflection and introspection may find this method beneficial. The therapeutic process involves exploring one’s inner world and connecting current struggles and past experiences.
- Improving Interpersonal Relationships: This approach can be valuable for those who want to enhance their interpersonal relationships by understanding patterns of behavior and communication learned in early relationships.
- Personality Disorders: It is often used in the treatment of specific personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder.
- Addressing Repressed Emotions: For individuals who may have repressed or unresolved emotions from the past, psychodynamic treatment provides a space to bring these emotions to light and work through them.
- Developing Self-awareness: This approach can help individuals develop a deeper understanding of themselves, fostering increased self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Effectiveness
The effectiveness of any therapeutic approach can vary from person to person. Some individuals may prefer and respond better to other methods, such as cognitive-behavioral (CBT) or Solution-Focused approaches. Treatment choice depends on your preferences, so we will go over this approach and others when we first meet to see which one, or what combination, will be most helpful. What is psychodynamic therapy going to be like for you? That is a question with a different answer for every client.
Psychodynamic Therapy Examples
Here are some psychodynamic therapy examples that point out the general techniques and how they might be used in practice. This approach is based on the idea that unconscious thoughts and past experiences—especially from childhood—influence current behavior.
1. Free Association
Example:
A client is encouraged to say whatever comes to mind without filtering or censoring.
Client: “I was talking to my boss and suddenly thought about my father yelling at me as a kid… I don’t know why.”
Me: “Let’s explore that connection—how might your relationship with your father affect how you respond to authority figures?”
2. Exploring Defense Mechanisms
Example:
A client avoids talking about a painful breakup and instead jokes about it.
Me: “I notice you tend to laugh when we bring up the breakup—do you think humor might be a way of protecting yourself from feeling the pain more deeply?”
3. Childhood Experience Exploration
Example:
A client who fears abandonment discusses being left at daycare for long hours as a child.
Me: “Do you think some of those early experiences shaped how you now react when people pull away from you?”
4. Working Through Transference
Example:
A client becomes angry with the me, feeling they are being judged.
Me: “I wonder if you might be reacting to me as you might have reacted to someone else in your past—does this feel similar to other relationships?”
5. Identifying Repetitive Patterns
Example:
A client repeatedly chooses emotionally unavailable partners.
Me: “Let’s think about where this pattern might come from. Was there someone in your early life who you had to work hard to get attention from?”
I could give many other psychodynamic therapy examples, so please feel free to call me and we can discuss your unique situation and goals.
Psychodynamic Therapy vs. CBT
What is psychodynamic therapy like compared to other approaches? Here’s a breakdown of Psychodynamic Therapy vs. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral)—how they differ in approach, goals, techniques, and more:
Core Philosophy of Psychodynamic Therapy vs. CBT
Psychodynamic Therapy:
- Focuses on unconscious processes and how past experiences (especially childhood) influence present behavior.
- Aims for deep emotional insight and long-term change.
- Emphasizes the therapeutic relationship, transference, and emotional exploration.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral):
- Focuses on current thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors.
- Aims for practical solutions to current problems.
- Works to identify and change negative thought patterns and behaviors.
Techniques
Psychodynamic Techniques:
- Free association
- Dream analysis
- Exploring childhood memories
- Identifying defense mechanisms
- Working through transference
CBT Techniques:
- Thought records
- Cognitive restructuring (challenging distorted thinking)
- Behavioral experiments
- Exposure (for anxiety/phobias)
- Homework assignments
What is Psychodynamic Therapy Like vs. CBT: Time Frame
Psychodynamic Therapy:
- Can be long-term (months to years)
- Focused on personality change and emotional insight
CBT:
- Often short-term (6–20 sessions)
- Focused on symptom reduction and skill-building
Psychodynamic Therapy vs. CBT Goals
Psychodynamic Therapy:
- Increase self-awareness and emotional understanding
- Uncover root causes of distress
CBT:
- Identify and change unhelpful thinking/behavior
- Teach coping strategies to manage symptoms
Example Issue: Social Anxiety
Psychodynamic Therapy Techniques: Explore how early relationships (e.g., a critical parent) led to internalized shame and fear of judgment. Work through these feelings in the therapeutic relationship.
CBT Techniques: Identify anxious thoughts like “People will think I’m stupid,” challenge them with evidence, and practice exposure to social situations to reduce fear.
Conclusions and My Work
Psychodynamic therapy techniques often take longer than other approaches like cognitive-behavioral or Solution-Focused Therapy. While these short-term, symptom-focused therapies have become more prominent in recent decades, psychodynamic therapy still has a place in contemporary psychotherapy. It can benefit individuals seeking a deeper understanding of their emotional and psychological issues and pairs well with other methods, such as emotion-focused therapy interventions and relational psychotherapy.
If you want to discuss how this approach might benefit you, you want more psychodynamic therapy examples similar to your unique needs, or learn more about how a mix of this approach and others might work for you, please contact me for a free consultation.
