Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

What is psychodynamic psychotherapy?

Psychodynamic therapy is one of the oldest of modern therapies and has its roots in psychoanalysis.  It is used widely to address the majority of challenging emotional, relational and behavioural difficulties. Longer term psychotherapy provides the best opportunity to work more deeply with complex and deep seated psychological, personality, emotional and relationship problems which may have developed over a life time, in order to alleviate the symptoms and provide the opportunity for deep change.  Twice weekly appointments can enable a deeper level of working when it feels necessary.

As a psychodynamic therapist I encourage a client to talk about their feelings - feelings about themselves, others, situations.  I use the responses to help understand the negative influence the past is having over your life now.  We can't always recall childhood experiences or traumatic memories.  Perhaps they were beyond our level of understanding at the time. The term 'unconscious' refers to the part of the mind where the impact of painful feelings and experiences remains out of reach and we use various defences to avoid looking at them.  It's the mind's way of protecting us from being overwhelmed, but the result can be that those very memories and experiences continue to exert a negative influence on our current emotions, relationships, patterns of destructive habits and behaviours, self esteem or ability to cope with life's anxieties.

Through talking and thinking together, exploring, interpreting, linking, drawing on professional experience and understanding, psychodynamic therapy safely helps to gradually reveal the impact of early life relationships and situations and how they continue to impact in a disruptive and negative way on current patterns of emotional, relationship and behavioural difficulties.  With that understanding, you have the possibility to think differently about yourself, how to manage relationships and how you might behave differently in a more constructive way. 

The relationship between the therapist and client is central to psychodynamic working.  During sessions the client can begin relating to the therapist in a way which reflects the very difficulties that they struggle with.  As a psychodynamic therapist, I offer the necessary physical and psychological environment in which to safely explore what gradually becomes available to work with and can be thought about together.   Whatever is re-enacted in our relationship is useful and worked with together for your benefit.

If you still have some questions or would like to talk through your needs before making any commitment, please do call me on 0778 955 4675 or send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.