Describe the aspects of psychodynamic therapy and the current approaches.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Psychodynamic therapy seeks to bring unresolved past conflicts and unacceptable impulses from the unconscious into the conscious, where patients may deal with the problems more effectively. Psychodynamic approaches hold that people employ defense mechanisms, psychological strategies to protect themselves from unacceptable unconscious impulses. However, because people cannot completely bury their unacceptable thoughts and impulses, anxiety associated with them can produce abnormal behavior. Freud assumed that confronting the conflicts and impulses by bringing them out of the unconscious part of the mind and into the conscious part would reduce anxiety stemming from past conflicts and that the patients could then participate in their daily life more effectively. Psychoanalysis is Freud's specific version of psychodynamic therapy. It employs techniques such as free association, dream interpretation, and transference to release hidden thoughts and feelings from the unconscious part of a patient's mind to reduce their power in controlling the patient's behavior.

Although psychodynamic approaches originally derived from Freud's psychoanalytic theories of personality, today they encompass a wider range of therapies. Today, psychodynamic therapy tends to be of shorter duration, usually lasting no longer than 3 months or 20 sessions. Psychodynamic therapists take a more active role than Freud would have prescribed, and they prod and advise patients with considerable directness. Finally, contemporary psychodynamic therapists put less emphasis on a patient's past history and childhood. Instead, they concentrate on an individual's current relationships and specific concerns.