Psychotherapy,psychoanalysis,psychodynamic

The authors provide an overview of the history of psychiatric services and training in Singapore, and the more recent introduction of psychodynamic psychotherapy training for psychiatric residents. They describe the current state of psychodynamic psychiatry services in the public healthcare system, including efforts at fostering psychodynamic thinking in nonpsychiatric community partners via community mental health integrated care programs and activities such as Balint Groups. They discuss current challenges in psychodynamic practice, such as the impact of language and culture on the Singaporean individual's receptiveness to psychodynamic psychotherapy, as well as systemic challenges in funding and expanding psychodynamic services...

This article considers the use of the term psychodynamics . I reflect on a recent exchange with a reviewer who suggested that the adjective psychodynamic is the preferred term, and I make a case for the importance of the noun form. The implication of the elimination of the noun form may have far-reaching unconscious meaning about the perception of psychodynamics, and whether psychodynamics exists only when there is conscious effort of its application, such as in outpatient psychotherapy. This has bearing on how psychodynamics is currently taught in training programs and perhaps the role of psychodynamics in larger practice...

This qualitative study focuses on the process of treatment over the internet from a psychodynamic perspective based on the experiences of seventeen patients in China who underwent online treatment by psychoanalysts based in the United States or other Western nations. The data were collected and analyzed using psychodynamic themes. Seventeen participants involved in online cross-national and cross-cultural psychodynamic treatment were recruited in China. Various themes in regard to the process of online treatment in a cross-national and cross-cultural context emerged...

During the Covid-19 pandemic, psychotherapists quickly transitioned to provide online therapy, while facing many challenges. This study aimed to explore psychodynamic and psychoanalytically oriented therapists' ( N = 1450) experiences with online therapy during the first weeks of the pandemic and two months later. Results showed that therapists had little pre-pandemic experience with providing online therapy and even less training in it, and that younger therapists reported more challenges in the transition to online therapy...

The level of structural integration (LSI), a psychodynamic/psychoanalytic concept originally developed by the Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD), provides a promising empirical approach that is recognized beyond the boundaries of psychoanalysis and is highly relevant for therapy and research. The aim of our study was to investigate the intersession experiences of patients in psychotherapy with different levels of structural integration. The sample consisted of 69 inpatients who were undergoing psychotherapeutic treatment...

Background: The Internet has become the main source of information on health issues, and information now determines the therapeutic preferences of patients. For this reason, it is relevant to analyze online information discussing psychotherapy. Objective: To investigate tweets posted by 25 major US media outlets between 2009 and 2019 concerning psychotherapy. Methods: We investigated tweets posted by 25 major US media outlets about psychotherapy between January 2009 and December 2019 as well as the likes generated...

This paper describes forces that have adversely affected the place of the psychodynamic perspective within psychiatric practice and training over the last generation. One effect of these forces has been to create a lost generation of psychiatrists with little knowledge or experience with psychodynamic treatment. The article addresses opportunities to reverse some of the detrimental effects of recent changes. The Residency Review Committee's introduction of a requirement that residents achieve a measurable level of competence in five schools of psychotherapy represents a major opportunity to influence psychiatric training and practice...

Near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, on April 13, 2020, about 50 members of the American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis convened through Zoom to talk about the impact of the pandemic on their practices, their patients, and themselves.∗ They offer their reflections through oral and written comments. Participants were encouraged to organize their contributions around the dimensions of administrative psychiatry, the structure of clinical care, the content of clinical care, the patients' reported personal experiences, and the psychiatrists' reported personal experiences...

The need to create order out of chaos is a driving force, ethologicalty determined, and part of the human condition. Narrative, especially autobiography and self narrative, helps us sort out myriad fantasies, events, and images, weaving them into a cohesive whole that eventually promotes self-awareness. The narratives of Virginia Woolf, St. Augustine, and Samuel Beckett are briefly described. Attachment theory and current research demonstrates that secure attachment is a first step in the socialization process and helps put one's life in perspective...

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In the practice of medicine, an understanding of the biological functioning of organs and organ systems is the basis for theories of pathology and clinical practice. If psychoanalysis is to be accepted by the medical and psychiatric community, it must be based on a sophisticated understanding of the organ from which mental and emotional experiences emanate and use scientifically acceptable language. Each approach to psychotherapy has its own vocabulary for describing neuropsychological processes. Neurobiological vocabulary provides the various factions "neutral ground" upon which to carry on a multidisciplinary integrative dialogue...

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the field of psychotherapy to the need to provide treatment remotely. We discuss the question of whether remote therapy can be curative and if the electronic device used to manage these sessions unites or separates the therapist and the patient. We term the electronic device as 'the inanimate third' in the therapeutic process and discuss the objectivity of the device as opposed to the subjective emotional processes involved. We deal with emotional themes relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated social distancing practices, such as longing, loneliness, the perception of the future and the lost past, and the efficacy of the therapeutic stimulation of fantasy and hope...

BACKGROUND: Despite the increase in the number of clinical psychologists contributing to stroke care, the psychosocial aspects of rehabilitation will of necessity continue to be addressed by other rehabilitation professionals The clinical psychology of stroke rehabilitation is a growing field, with an extant literature reflecting different theoretical schools of psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic ideas have begun to enter the practice of neurorehabilitation, but with so far little written about stroke specifically...

In Part I contemporary psychoanalytic concepts about suicide were synthesized with other theories and empirical research findings. Here the focus is on applying those principles and describing an integrative psychodynamic approach to treatment, one emphasizing the therapeutic alliance, unconscious and implicit processes, exploration of fantasy, and use of the therapeutic relationship as an implicitly interpretive vehicle for change. It is "integrative" because it draws on ideas and techniques described in dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), as well on developmental and social psychology research...

Psychodynamic psychotherapy has an important role in suicide prevention. The psychoanalytic study of suicide has taught us a great deal about the human experience and the process of suicidality. There is also much to be learned from other fields of study and from empirical research that can be integrated into psychoanalytic therapies. Central to the psychoanalytic approach to suicide has been understanding the patient's internal subjective experience of unbearable emotional or psychic pain and the urgent need for relief...

BACKGROUND: A recent meta-analysis has confirmed that the effects of psychotherapy on patients with borderline personality disorders (BPD) are still insufficiently understood. Evidence of differences between different types of therapies has been questioned. AIM: To study repetitive interaction patterns in patients with BPD undergoing either psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy. METHODS: Psychoanalysis (PSA) or psychodynamic psychotherapy (PDT) was administered to 10 patients each, the two groups were matched...

The 2017 Netflix series "13 reasons why" also caused a mass media sensation as well as a sensation in the psychiatric and psychotherapeutic world. The series follows protagonist Hannah Baker over the course of 13 episodes, uncovering the 13 distinct plots ultimately resulting in Hanna's suicide by means of audio cassettes she had recorded shortly before taking her own life. Utilising reflective, relational film psychoanalysis according to Hamburger (2018), the topics suicidality, guilt, power and powerlessness, autonomy, identity crisis and aggression can be elaborated on...

This paper discusses the experience of psychodynamically oriented therapists in private practice as they contemplate raising their fees. Raising fees stirs up competing self-interest, transference-countertransference reverberations, financial fantasies and realities, ethical concerns, and uncomfortable as well as satisfied self-reflection. These dynamics are discussed under the following categories: exercise of power; incurring guilt; inappropriate entitlement; fear of loss; modeling of self-care; rapaciousness; unconscious factors; and self-esteem...

The author describes the differences between standard psychoanalysis and transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) and reviews particular difficulties that psychodynamically trained clinicians have in learning TFP. In delineating differences between standard psychoanalysis and TFP, the author discusses mutual influences between standard psychoanalytic techniques and techniques of TFP. TFP is an extension and modification of standard psychoanalysis, but with quantitative modifications geared to the treatment of the most severe segment of personality disorders that tend not to be treatable by standard analysis...

Supportive psychotherapy interventions were developed as a part of psychodynamic psychotherapy work, and supportive psychotherapy was historically considered to be the default form of therapy only for lower-functioning patients. These roots unfortunately have resulted in supportive psychotherapy being viewed as an inferior form of treatment. In reality, supportive psychotherapy is a practical and flexible form of psychotherapy that helps patients with a wide range of psychiatric illnesses, including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, and substance use disorders...