Psychodynamic approach

Rosenthal, Richard J., and Loreen J. Rugle. 1994. "A Psychodynamic Approach to the Treatment of Pathological Gambling Part I. Achieving Abstinence." Journal of Gambling Studies 10 21-42. 

Offers the most effective treatment for sociopathy yet to emerge, based on a psychodynamic approach that helps clincians avoid common countertransference traps. By Debra H. Benveniste, M.S.W. Hardcover, 44.95... 

Rraepelin s view of mental illness as a brain disease dominated psychiatry throughout the early decades of the twentieth century after that time, his theories and writings abruptly faded into obscurity. Kraepelin publicly acknowledged that psychiatry offered few effective medical treatments and no cures for most psychiatric disorders. A contemporary of Kraepelin, Sigmund Freud and his followers, adopted a psychodynamic approach to mental illness called psychoanalysis. They theorized that psychiatric problems arose from childhood conflicts that... 

According to the psychodynamic approach, learned patterns of family dynamics influence leadership. Insight into one s own personality is thus beneficial. This approach is criticized because it is based on the psychology of the abnormal and focuses primarily on the personalities of leaders and followers. As such, it does not lend itself to traditional training. 

Traditional psychodynamic therapy in the treatment of addiction often fails however, the principles of psychodynamic therapy are still valuable and important for a clinician in order to understand the patient and help him or her work through his or her mechanisms of defense, attachment difficulties, processing grief, and coping with internal and external drives.32 Among the validated and thoroughly studied approaches are the following ... 

Another perspective comes from famiiy systems theory, which characterizes the schizophrenic patient s family as having disordered communication, with various members playing unusual or aberrant roles. According to this theory, patients experience double binds when faced with contradictory expectations ( 7). Related controversial hypotheses held that the schizophrenogenic mother was the critical factor and then later that the schizophrenic s father also played a significant role (8, 9 and 10). Intensive therapy, in the context of in-hospital separation from the family, was considered the treatment of choice. In contrast to classic psychodynamic therapy, which focuses on the individual patient, this approach attempts to resolve conflicts in the family system, as well as in the patient s psyche. Typically, this involves sessions that include all or as many members as possible. Thus, even though one member is identified as the patient, it is the disturbed communication and interactions among all members that is the focus of therapy. This and subsequent therapeutic approaches may be most effective when medication is used concurrently. 

One of the most extraordinary, important, and potent features of the brain-mind is the construct of the self. As yet we cannot give an adequate account of how a brain comes to instantiate a self, but this still obscure integration process clearly involves memory and emotion, the two modules of the brain-mind that have always been of greatest interest to psychodynamic psychology. Now that we know how memory and emotion are altered in a state-dependent way, we can use that information to generate new approaches to their access, interpretation, and manipulation in the interest of personal satisfaction and social success. 

Wachtel, P. L. (ed) (1982). Resistance Psychodynamic and Behavioural Approaches. New York Plenum Press. 

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