Chapter 2 - Psychodynamics (ugh)

Question 1

What six core principles/constructs are present within psychodynamics (PD)?

name them

Answer 1

• Unconscious motivation
• Insight into unconscious
• Avoidance and defense
• Ambivalence about change
• Therapeutic relationship as a tool
• Past in the present

Question 2

How does psychodynamics aim to help clients?

Answer 2

By making a contruction of personal narrative; helps clients understand how their interpretations of past and present maintain maladaptive patterns

Question 3

How do unconscious motivations and increasing insight into said unconscious look in PD?

Answer 3

• People are partly driven by unconscious desired, fantasies and memories
• Increasing awareness of above fosters greater choice and psych flexibility

Question 4

What is meant by avoidance and defense in PD?

Answer 4

Psych symptoms often reflect defensive efforts to avoid painful emotions/thoughts/memories

Question 5

PD talks about “past in the present”, what is meant by this?

Answer 5

That clients recreate interpersonal templates in the therapeutic relationship (resistance related?? idk)

Question 6

What were two important reforms for PD in response to critiques?

Answer 6

• Becoming more pluralistic and inclusive (culture incl., for e.g.)
• Greater emphasis on relationality, empathy and human complexity

Question 7

Why is PD hard to compare to other therapies?

Answer 7

It focuses on complexity and also incorporates a lot of philosophical shit- i.e., less specificity and less symptom-focused than most therapies

Question 8

What is, currently, the main focus of PD?

Answer 8

Depth, emotional insight and relational dynamics (transference/countertransferance)

Question 9

Name the four main stages (?) of PD?

Answer 9

1. Engagement and alliance building
2. Exploration of experience
3. Working through
4. Termination

Question 10

What is meant by the stage in PD of “working through”?

Answer 10

Repetitive analysis of patterns, resistance, transference, and emotional processing

Question 11

What is meant by the termination stage in PD?

Answer 11

Consolidation of gains, exploration of feelings about ending, and potential recurrence of old issues

Question 12

What are the six main interventions used in PD

with very brief explanations

Answer 12

• Empathy
• Interpretation
• Clarification and conjecture (articulate vague/confusing shit)
• Support and advice
• Exploration of resistance
• Enactment analysis (therapist-client dynamic exploration as these are assumed to mirror past relationships > relational schemas)