What type of psychotherapy is best for me?
There are shorter and medium term psychotherapies which focus on more surface or immediate situations in ones life such as an adjustment difficulty to a change in one's life, i.e. job change, relocation, relationship stress or breakup. These shorter term psychotherapies include:
Supportive psychotherapy
A professional therapist can provide support and guidance regarding life changes with a goal to improve coping skills and insight allowing for emotional growth and change and reduction of symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Cognitive-Behavioral psychotherapy
A therapist utilizes strategies to assist identification and modification of underlying cognitive distortions and unhealthy behaviors leading to improvement in depression and anxiety symptoms.
Other types of psychotherapy such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Interpersonal psychotherapy are specialized types of treatment based on Cognitive Behavioral therapy principles.
There are a group of deeper psychotherapies which allow a deeper treatment to develop making it easier to work on issues which have been present in ones life over a longer period of time. Deeper psychotherapy allows a person to work to change old patterns, i.e. old habits, personality difficulties, unresolved trauma issues. These longer term psychotherapies include:
Psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis
Psychoanalytic treatment is based on the idea that people are frequently motivated by unrecognized wishes and desires that originate in one’s unconscious.
These can be identified through the relationship between patient and analyst. By listening to patients’ stories, fantasies, and dreams, as well as discerning how patients interact with others, psychoanalysts offer a unique perspective that friends and relatives might be unable to see. The analyst also listens for the ways in which these patterns occur between patient and analyst. What is out of the patient’s awareness is called “transference” and what is out of the analyst’s awareness is called “countertransference.”
Sometimes also called psychodynamic psychotherapy, this treatment method is based on the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. The primary difference is that the patient and analyst meet less frequently, sometimes only once a week. As with psychoanalysis, the frequency of sessions can be customized to the needs of the patient. Another difference is that the patient usually sits upright and opposite the therapist, rather than reclining on a couch with the therapist out of view.
Other than these differences, psychoanalytic psychotherapy is very much like analysis in its use of free association, the importance placed on the unconscious, and the centrality of the patient-therapist relationship.
Talking with a trained psychoanalyst helps identify underlying patterns and behaviors. By analyzing the transference and countertransference, analyst and patient can discover paths toward the emotional freedom necessary to make substantive, lasting changes, and heal from past traumas.
Typically, psychoanalysis involves the patient coming several times a week and communicating as openly and freely as possible. While more frequent sessions deepen and intensify the treatment, frequency of sessions is worked out between the patient and analyst.
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