Psychodynamic Theories and Models

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy, humanistic psychology, and other dynamic therapies are based on a medical model that views maladaptive behavior as a symptom of an unconscious conflict or other underlining pathology that arose from some historical event. The primary goal of the dynamic therapies, therefore, is not to eliminate a maladaptive behavior but identify and eliminate a maladaptive cause. Psychoanalytic psychotherapies are considered long-term therapy.

Unlike Family Systems Therapy, the psychodynamic theory assumes that the personality and behavior, including maladaptive behavior, are the result of the interplay of forces or contradictory thoughts that cannot be accessed through the ego structure within the individual. (This is hard for a lay person to understand.)

Goal

The goal is to identify the intrapersonal forces that disrupt individual and social interactions, to explore unresolved unconscious conflicts, identify maladaptive internalized images that cause or result in maladaptive behaviors. The clients should be aware of the work and influences of the following personality psychodynamic theorists: Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung to mention a few.