What is Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy can help people who come with a variety
of problems. Some people
have specific symptoms of anxiety, depression, or other mood
disturbance. Others
struggle with self-esteem and with lack of confidence or success in
personal relationships or careers.
Still others identify personality traits or repetitive patterns
of behavior that are troublesome to themselves or that interfere in
their relationships with others.
And there are those who are creative, but who have not been able
to reach their potential due to inhibitions in the creative process or
to difficulty in identifying their true “voices.”
Psychodynamic psychotherapy focuses its attention on identifying the underlying emotional sources of these sorts of difficulties. Some of these factors may be already known by the person and mostly require the therapist’s help in putting them in a new context of understanding. Other sources are beyond awareness and can only be recognized and named through the therapeutic process that unfolds between the therapist and the patient. This requires careful and respectful listening by the psychoanalytically-trained therapist—listening in order to try to understand how and why each person is experiencing emotional pain or dysfunction in these unique ways at the present time in his or her life.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is intended to assist people to have
greater freedom in their relationships with themselves and with others
and to reach their potential in important areas of their lives.
Some people may benefit from medication in combination with
psychotherapy to lessen certain mood symptoms, but the central
benefits of psychotherapy come from the collaboration between the
therapist and the patient as they work together to listen, to
understand, and to bring about change.
Go to:
What is Psychoanalysis?