Background: Somatic symptom disorders are common, disabling and costly. Individually provided short-term psychodynamic psychotherapies (STPP) have shown promising results. However, the effectiveness of STPP for somatic symptom disorders has not been reviewed. Methods: We undertook a systematic review of randomized controlled trials and controlled before and after studies. The outcomes included ...

At the American Psychoanalytic Association meeting in December 1998, there was a Presidential Symposium entitled “Psychoanalysis and American Medical Education for the Millennium: Teaching and Practice-Building Opportunities.” The speakers included national leaders in psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and medical education. The talks covered the range of relevant topics, from the new economic organiz...

In spite of a wide recommendation of supervision in training and continuous education in mental health, professional literature on the problem is relatively scarce. Majority of publications listed in the data bases concern rather clinical supervision then specific psychotherapy supervision. Supervision has originated within psychoanalysis, as continuation of training analysis, to develop later ...

In psychodynamic theory, trauma is associated with a life event, which is defined by its intensity, by the inability of the person to respond adequately and by its pathologic longlasting effects on the psychic organization. In this paper, we describe how neurobiological changes link to psychodynamic theory. Initially, Freud believed that all types of neurosis were the result of former traumatic...

Rationally selected Comprehensive System (CS; Exner, 1991, 1993, 2003) Rorschach variables and suitability for psychodynamic psychotherapy were investigated in four studies with different designs. The participants comprised three clinical samples (n = 52, 25, and 69) of patients applying for and/or selected for dynamic psychotherapy. With few exceptions the CS variables were the same in the stu...

Psychosocial interventions have been shown to enhance pharmacotherapy outcomes in bipolar affective disorder (BAD). This article describes an application of psychosocial intervention as the additional therapy for BAD. In this case report we present the course of illness, psychological features and specific chronic stress of a patient with BAD. Following the recent guidelines, we applied the pha...

OBJECTIVES The primary objective of this study was to assess the relationship between countertransference (CT) and therapeutic alliance (TA) during the early stages of psychodynamic psychotherapy. A secondary objective is to assess associations between CT and variables related to therapist and patient and between CT and other patient variables investigated, which were defense mechanisms, sympto...