E.A.P.P.’ s Purpose
- To promote the scientific psychotherapeutic research and to ensure the continuation of the high standards of the services that the psychotherapist provides.
- To inform the public about the importance of a psychotherapist’s services.
- To care about the development of professional activities in various sectors of social and economic life.
- The dissemination and popularization of psychotherapeutic knowledge.
- To contribute to the promotion of the profession of psychotherapist.
- To organize seminars, conferences, gatherings of the members and conversations.
- To organize surveys and to support research programs related to psychotherapy or psychosocial treatment.
- To contribute actively to the establishment of community counselling centers in co – operation with other institutions.
- To make publications, announcements, to publish journals, books and dictionaries, to weight – publish and to provide psychotherapeutic Tests and to set up a library.
- To come in contact with other organizations and associations and all the appropriate bodies of home country as well as abroad.
- To move drastically in order to resolve problems of our field.
- To protect the psychotherapists’ interests.
- To promote the psychosocial care in all areas related to psychotherapy, based on the needs and the interests of the individual.
- Τo participate actively in resolving social issues that concern the people and the country.
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
TABLE 1.1. Essential Features of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in Current Practice |
• Use of exploratory, interpretative, and supportive intervention's as appropriate |
• Frequent sessions |
• Emphasis on uncovering painful affects, understanding past painful experiences |
• Goal is to facilitate emotional experience and increase understanding |
• Focus on the therapeutic relationship, including attention to transference and countertransference |
• Use of a wide range of techniques, with variability in application by different practitioners |
This is a cognitive therapy intervention. Or the therapist could keep the patient's angry feelings in the room, helping to contain them and nor argue them away. He could help her observe the feelings and connect them with the themes they have already discussed. This latter approach is unique to psychodynamic psychotherapy.
Psychodynamic Narrative is Part of Our Culture
Third, dynamic therapy is valuable because Freudian ideas permeate contemporary Western culture. The unconscious, the effect of early childhood on later experiences, internal conflict as a normal state of affairs, phases of development, and the ubiquity of anxiety are ideas we practically find in our drinking water. They are integral to our culture's picture of the individual, the life cycle, and interpersonal relationships. Because they inform and shape our worldview, our treatments must somehow involve, refer to, and embrace these beliefs. Indeed, Jerome Frank (Frank & Frank, 1991) said that therapy must reflect the prevailing values of the culture and address the individual through this language. At the same time that its importance is waning in therapeutics, the upsurge of interest in psychoanalysis and Freud in the humanities reflects how deeply embedded these ideas are in our cultural and intellectual tradition.
Fourth, therapists tend to choose psychodynamic psychotherapy for their own treatment, as documented in a recent study of psychiatry trainees (Habl, Mintz, & Bailey, 2009), Our impression is that other trainees tend to choose dynamically oriented treatments, as well. Why this occurs during a time when other psychotherapies are proliferating is an interesting question. Therapists often enter treatment early in their careers and are influenced by their teachers and mentors, and their treatment choice may simply reflect a cohort effect. As newer psychotherapies achieve greater dominance and their proponents fill the ranks of mentors and teachers, this is likely to diminish.
TABLE 1.2. New Ideas, Knowledge, and Social Forces Shape Change in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy |
|
New knowledge, social forces |
Changes in psychotherapy theory and technique |
Demand characteristics of therapy |
Education, orientation, explanation |
Increased recognition of the importance of the therapeutic alliance |
New techniques for developing alliance and repairing ruptures |
Convergence of concepts of fantasy, schema, pathogenic thoughts |
Emphasis on schema resulting from traumatic experiences |
Importance of narrative |
Rewriting of narrative a focus of therapy |
Reality of trauma; therapeutic relationship a result of patient and therapist factors |
Less hierarchical treatment relationship, closer attention to minute-to-minute aspect of process |
Positive psychology |
Attention to character, positive emotion, and enhancement |
Need to understand psychotherapy in combination with other treatments |
Clarification of role of psychotherapy in overall treatment plan |
Neurobiological understanding of psychotherapy |
May provide additional scientific evidence for psychoanalytic concepts |
Patient advocacy and empowerment |
Education, transparency, informed consent |
Concern about efficiency |
Time-limited treatment; changes in technique, goals |