Core Principles and Characteristics
Although psychodynamic psychotherapy can take many forms, commonalities include:
- An emphasis on the centrality of intrapsychic and unconscious conflicts, and their relation to development.
- Seeing defenses as developing in internal psychic structures in order to avoid unpleasant consequences of conflict.
- A belief that psychopathology develops especially from early childhood experiences.
- A view that internal representations of experiences are organized around interpersonal relations.
- A conviction that life issues and dynamics will re-emerge in the context of the client-therapist relationship as transference and counter-transference.
- Use of free association as a major method for exploration of internal conflicts and problems.
- Focusing on interpretations of transference, defense mechanisms, and current symptoms and the working through of these present problems.
- Trust in insight as critically important for success in therapy.
Read more about this topic: Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
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—David Hume (1711–1776)