We investigated the comparative effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural (CBT) and psychodynamic therapy (PDT) under clinically representative conditions as a subtrial of a prior study (Watzke et al., 2010, BJP). A consecutive sample of 147 patients with common mental disorders was randomised to either CBT or PDT in routine mental health care. In a primary per-protocol analysis patients randomise...

Very little is written in American forensic journals about psychodynamic psychotherapy for patients committed to forensic hospitals. Relatively little is known of the process of helping these patients cope with their mental illnesses, to gain insight into their crimes and their unconscious dynamics, or simply to cope with the dreary landscape of the forensic maximum-security institution. In thi...

This article addresses the issue of failures in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Drawing on the clinical and research literatures, and utilizing our clinical experiences, we first describe and define criteria for success and failure in treatment. We then review five factors that can lead to failure: client factors, therapist factors, technical factors, relationship factors, and environmental factor...

The ways and means by which psychoanalysis achieves meaningful change remain as poorly understood today as they did two decades ago, when Fonagy (1982) made a similar observation. Although we have been able to systematically show that psychodynamic psychotherapy is effective, despite difficulties in disseminating those facts (Shedler, 2010), we have had more difficulties in understanding the th...

This article focuses on two components of psychodynamic psychotherapy with suicidal patients. First, the value and importance of establishing and maintaining a clearly defined therapeutic alliance is noted and explored. A carefully negotiated alliance can become an edge or boundary across which the survival of the therapy, as well as the patient, can be negotiated. Attention to the vicissitudes...

For many years psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies have been considered to lack a credible evidence-base and have consistently failed to appear in lists of ‘empirically supported treatments’. This study systematically reviews the research evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of psychodynamic psychotherapy for children and young people. The researchers identified 34 separate studies ...

In 1990, Gerald Klerman argued persuasively, and surely noncontroversially, that psychiatric patients have a right to effective treatment (1). Klerman referred to litigation in which a patient hospitalized for 7 months at Chestnut Lodge held the hospital negligent for providing only intensive psychotherapy without adding antidepressant medication in spite of a marked worsening of his depressive...

BACKGROUND Depression in adolescents seems to be a growing problem that causes mental suffering and prevents young people from joining the workforce. There is also a high risk of relapse during adult life. There is emerging evidence for the effect of psychodynamic psychotherapy in adolescents. In-session relational intervention (that is, transference intervention) is a key component of psychody...