Why Psychotherapy?

Psychodynamic psychotherapy (and the closely related psychoanalytic psychotherapy) is a type of talking therapy that is evidence-based for the treatment for a range of mental health difficulties (1, 2). It is interested in the unconscious and understands that our psychical life informs our experiences of early life attachments and also our sense of ourselves and the enduring patterns of relationships that we can have with others in the here-and-now. It might be that some of these ways of being with another person may have served a function in the past but the persistence of in the individual’s current life circumstances can contribute to some of their on-going difficulties.

My work as a psychotherapist is to help allow some of these patterns of relationships and their associated feelings (painful as they often are) to emerge within the therapy so that they can be thought about and understood together. Psychotherapy can provide some relief from these feelings and with the working through of these feelings, can also free the individual to make more informed changes in their lives.

More information on psychotherapy (including about psychoanalytic psychotherapy) is available at; What is psychotherapy? What is psychoanalytic psychotherapy? (bpc.org.uk)

References

Fonagy P. The effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapies: An update. World Psychiatry. 2015 Jun;14(2):137-50.
Shedler J. The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American psychologist. 2010 Feb;65(2):98.