Psychodynamic psychotherapy Flashcards
Brief of Psychodynamic therapy
Insight orientated therapy.
Focuses on unconscious processes as they are manifested in a person’s present behavior.
Involves looking at early childhood experiences.
Enables examining past unresolved conflicts.
Definition of Psychodynamic
Long-term therapy, typically about 2 years or longer.
To facilitate shifts in functioning, behavior and internalized models of attachment.
Brief ones usually occurs over about 25 sessions with one major focus for the therapy.
Unconscious mind
mental processes of which individuals make themselves unaware.
Psychotic events occur in it (below the surface).
Actively repressed from conscious thought.
Repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind.
Transference
- Childhood patterns/past ways of relating to people are repeated in the present with therapist/doctor.
- Qualities of a figure from the past are attributed to the doctor and feelings associated with that figure are experienced in the same way with the doctor.
- It is unconscious.
- It is the transferring of a relationship not a person
- Not the entire relationship is transferred.
Countertransference
- If transference of expectations from previous relationships can happen in all relationships, we should expect it to affect doctors too.
- Doctors are human beings with conflicts and emotional struggles of their own.
More on countertransference
Includes the feelings evoked in the doctor by the patient’s transference projections
These can be a useful guide to the patient’s expectations of relationships
They are easier to identify if they are not congruent with the doctor’s personality and expectation of his or her role
Awareness of the transference–countertransference relationship allows reflection and thoughtful response rather than unthinking reaction from the doctor
Resistance
Patient is ambivalent of change.
Going for treatment threatens psychic equilibrium.
Examples of resistance
silence, forgetting to pay the bill, not taking medication, talking about superficial matters, coming late to appointments
Defence mechanisms: Repression
Blocking unacceptable ideas or thoughts from entering the consciousness.
E.g., Survivor of sexual abuse completely represses the experience of being abused.
Defence mechanisms: Denial
Blocking external events from awareness. If the situation is too much to handle, the person refuses to experience it.
E.g., Smokers not admitting that smoking is bad for their health.
Defence mechanism: Projection
Individuals attributing their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, and motives to another person.
E.g., You might hate someone but its not socially acceptable to do this, so its easier to believe that they hate you.
Defence mechanisms: Displacement
Satisfying an impulse with (e.g., aggression) with a substitute object.
E.g., Frustrated with your boss, you go home and kick the dog.
Defence mechanisms: Regression
Return to an earlier phase of development or functioning when in stress or conflict.
E.g., A child may begin to suck their thumb or wet bed at the birth of another sibling.
Defence mechanisms: Sublimation
Satisfying an impulse (e.g., aggression) with substitute object in a socially acceptable way.
E.g., Sport is an example of putting our emotions (aggression)into something constructive.
Freudian slip
We reveal what is really on our mind by saying something we didn’t mean to.
For example, on a date with a new girlfriend and accidentally calling her by old girlfriend’s name.
Freud believed that slips of the tongue provided an insight into the unconscious mind and that there were no accidents, every behaviour (including slips of the tongue) was significant (i.e. all behaviour is determined)
