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Old Sep 22, 2013, 12:09 PM
ultramar ultramar is offline
Poohbah
 
Member Since: Mar 2013
Location: USA
Posts: 1,486
I'm in psychodynamic therapy and it's been very helpful. As someone said, I think it gets to the root of the problems and there are studies showing that although it is often equally as effective as some CBT therapies in the short-term, it can have more lasting results. But this is always going to depend on the therapy-therapist-patient, so it's very hard to make generalizations.

I'll add that I think many contemporary/modern psychodynamic therapies are not so 'insight-oriented' as psychoanalysis used to be back in the day. In relational psychodynamic therapy (or even if it's not called that) I think the healing is in the *experience* (visceral, deep, not necessarily conscious) of the therapy relationship. So, whereas you may have some light bulb moments when talking about things on a more cognitive/intellectual level, the healing lies in the experience of the therapy itself, not even just how you feel about the therapist or how you relate to them, there's more to it than that, I think, but I'm going around in circles and am not good at explaining this!

Also, although CBT I think is billed as very here and now, and psychodynamic has the reputation of being very 'let's talk about your childhood' I don't think either is so limited. I've seen people here in CBT talk a lot about the past, and a lot of psychodynamic therapy can take place in the here and now.

It's usually once a week. I think psychoanalysis (which is really different in important ways) is up to 5 days a week.

In any case, I think a good therapist, no matter their preferred orientation, will gear the therapy towards the needs of a patient at any given time (which may change as the therapy progresses). Also, people can come in with all kinds of different issues, so you may need a relational approach, combined with addressing cognitive distortions, periods of trauma processing, some psychoeducation, etc.