Psychodynamic therapy: understanding yourself and your behaviour

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on unconscious processes that influence your thoughts, feelings and behaviour. By examining past patterns, this therapy helps you gain a better understanding of yourself and how your experiences affect your current life. This can help break through stuck behavioural patterns and develop healthier coping strategies.

What is psychodynamic therapy?

Psychodynamic therapy is rooted in psychoanalysis and focuses on the influence of the past on the present. Here, repressed emotions and unconscious conflicts play a major role. Through conversations with a therapist, these unconscious processes are gradually made conscious. This can lead to greater self-insight and a better understanding of one's own motives and behaviour.

Key elements of psychodynamic therapy are:

• Self-reflection and self-awareness: You learn to understand why you react in certain ways and where your behavioural patterns come from

• Processing unprocessed emotions: Discussing and feeling through emotions can help to give them a place.

• Dynamics in relationships: How you have interacted with others in the past often affects your current relationships. Therapy helps to recognise and break recurring patterns.

• The aim is not only to reduce symptoms, but also to make changes in your personality and lifestyle.

For whom is psychodynamic therapy suitable?

This therapy is especially suitable for people who want to dig deeper into the causes of their problems and helps with a variety of psychological complaints. For instance, it can be effective for anxiety and mood disorders, processing trauma and addressing relationship problems. People who struggle with their identity or have a negative self-image can also benefit from this form of therapy. In addition, psychodynamic therapy can provide support for long-term stress and burn-out symptoms, where understanding underlying patterns helps to make structural changes.

Practice example psychodynamic therapy

Emma (34) finds that she keeps getting stuck in her relationships. She feels easily rejected and then withdraws, but does not understand why. In psychodynamic therapy, she discovers that her fear of rejection stems from childhood experiences in which she often felt unseen by her parents. This insight allows her to recognise her patterns and learn to deal with them differently.

Support by scientific research

Research shows that psychodynamic therapy can be effective for various psychological complaints. A meta-analysis by Shedler (2010) shows that this form of therapy leads not only to symptom reduction, but also to profound and lasting changes in personality and functioning. This makes it a valuable choice for those looking for a lasting solution to psychological problems.

Want to know if psychodynamic therapy is right for you? Check out our list of therapists and find a practitioner that suits your needs.