What is Psychodynamic Psychotherapy?

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is a school of therapy derived from psychoanalytic theory. So what is psychodynamic therapy based on psychoanalytic concepts and methods?

Psychodynamic therapy as a psychotherapy technique; While it works with a person's past life and relationship pattern, such as early childhood experiences, relationships and memories, it also gives meaning to these by focusing on our unconscious materials: dreams, slips and daydreams.

So, what is the unconscious? In addition, although it is a subject of writing, we can briefly think of the unconscious, which is a concept also known as the subconscious in society, as the attic of a person's mind. Unconscious; It is everything that does not show itself at the person's conscious level and mind flow, that we suppress unconsciously because we have difficulty accepting certain emotions, but that continues to exist in the unconscious even if we are not aware of it. It's like a collection of forgotten and dusty items in the attic. We remove items and objects from the attic that we no longer need, even if they belong to us; To buy it if needed one day. Our emotions, desires, impulses and memories, which we repress because we cannot cope, are just like our belongings put away in the attic, waiting there to be picked up one day. The difficulties a person experiences in his daily life and the situations he cannot cope with all have a relationship with the items in that attic. For example, while we relegated the negative emotions that our sibling born when we were 5 years old to the attic (repression), all that remained at our level of consciousness was how happy an experience it was. However, the negative experience itself still exists today, even if we are not aware of it, and it winks at us until it is seen with various symptoms.

In psychodynamic therapy, the person associates the problems and situations that he or she finds difficult in daily life with everything that is hidden in the unconscious and related to himself, and discovers their meaning. His insight expands as the distance between consciousness and unconscious shortens. This discovery takes a longer time than other schools of therapy, because it will of course take time to make sense of and organize the dusty and messy world of the attic. This discovery itself is also addressed by focusing on the relationship of the relationship with the therapist to past relationship patterns. What does this relationship itself say about the client, his early relationships, his desires in the relationship, and his self? It also investigates which colors are more in the person's color palette, which colors are less, which colors are more prominent, which colors are paler, through the therapist-client relationship. Psychodynamic therapy; It is an accompaniment in which the person finds a way to create the colors hidden in life while existing in the therapy room with all the parts of the relationship and all its colors, and reaches his ultimate mental freedom by harmonizing his inner reality with the outside world.

So, what does a client expect in psychodynamic psychotherapy? Psychodynamic therapy has a clearer framework than other schools. The day and time of the session and the duration of the session are fixed and do not change. In sessions, priority is given to what the client brings. The therapist listens to whatever the client brings, without intervention, so that the client can express himself in his most natural state. For this reason, a psychodynamic therapist takes on a "quieter" role than therapists working in other schools, leaving the floor to the client to listen to the client's story. The therapist is not silent, he is “more” silent than other schools. There is an important reason for this "quieter" stay: not to inhibit the client's associations, way of expression and the things he will tell, and to open a free and safe space for the client. As the relationship is established and therapy progresses, the common meanings of the situations, relationships or desires described are discovered and interpreted together.

It would be difficult to interpret psychodynamic therapy, which is based on psychoanalytic theory, without understanding its history and without mentioning Sigmund Freud, one of the first people to research the psychological roots of mental health under the name of today's "talking therapy". This is the subject of our next article.