[ultramar]

Hi Everyone. There are questions sometimes on here about the nature of psychodynamic (relational and otherwise) therapy, as it's practiced today.

So I did some research and ended up finding a really great article on the origins and treatment of Complex PTSD with psychodynamic therapies. I'm pasting a couple of paragraphs below, but the link to the whole article is:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218759/

Hope this is helpful!

Interpersonal theories

Relational psychoanalysts understand that ‘the human mind, its normal development, its pathology, and the process of its therapeutic growth are relationally configured’ (p. 90).45 As such, both the cause and the cure for psychic suffering are found in relationships with others and in relationships between self-states. Although Bromberg believes the normal mind is made up of multiple self-states, those with pathological dissociation lack flexible relationships between these states that give ‘a person the remarkable capacity to negotiate character and change simultaneously – to stay the same while changing’ (p. 350). The goal of therapy is the facilitation of communication between self-states that have been ‘sequestered from each other dissociatively’ (p. 359).

Although Gustafson46 did not classify himself as a relational psychoanalyst, he understood the central dilemma as social – that of managing the need to fit in with the group alongside the constraints this places on being different. He, borrowing from Balint and others, understood the cause of ‘faulted situations’ to be primarily early violent intrusions by caregivers or being abandoned and without protection. Employing elements of field theory, Gustafson proposed individuals then developed malignant or benign faults that needed a ‘dilemma concept … to grasp the double jeopardy of these disorders’ (p. 8).

On one hand, he said the person asking for help can become too relationally close and experience the therapist as a persecutor and betrayer. On the other hand, if the person feels too distant, there is the specter of being condemned to a ‘terrible loneliness’ that has a ‘death aspect’ (p. 9). If there is enough space between the horns of this dilemma, therapy is possible and the ‘fault’ is seen as benign. If there is little or no space, the ‘fault’ is malignant and successful therapy becomes less likely.

Making central the therapeutic relationship as the source of recovery, rather than a pathway to it, Bromberg45 believed it was the ‘reciprocal process of active involvement with the states of mind of the other person that allows a patient’s here-and-now perception of self to share consciousness with the experiences of incompatible self-narratives that were formally dissociated’ (p. 357, original italics).

As the therapist becomes experientially active within the replaying of past trauma events (ie, incompatible self-narratives), communicates his/her reflections on the experience, promotes a continued sense of living through this, and an ability to stay in relational connection with the patient, the patient can develop more spontaneity, flexibility, and ‘the wholeness of being human’ (p. 357).

[peaches100]

That is a really good explanation of what I struggle with as a person with Complex PTSD. Thank you so much for sharing that.