What is Psychodynamic Psychology?

“Psychodynamic” is a way of referring to psychological perspectives and practices which are interested in the way that forces working within a person interact in ways that influence their experience of the world, as well as their behavior. Many of these forces operate outside of a person’s awareness, and in psychodynamics the notion of unknown aspects of the self – “the unconscious” – is highly important. This unconscious is not just a “second half” of a person, but rather is an original state from which the individual’s awareness grew and which still holds most of the individual’s experiences and the patterns that give rise to their way of thinking, perceiving, and acting.

The original iteration of the psychodynamic perspective came in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, a “talking cure” in which the therapist (referred to as an analyst in this tradition) and the patient come together to explore the unconscious aspects underlying the patient’s experience. The unconscious is vast – infinite even – and not all of what is within is vital to the experience of psychoanalysis. What Freud found most important to access for the healing that takes place in analysis were experiences that had entered the unconscious via “repression” – the forceful ejection or rejection of something like a memory or thought from consciousness and into the unconscious. Experiences which were repressed, Freud said, were often those which were too painful or threatening for the conscious mind to know about. Although repression is a healthy and nearly universal trait of any mind, too much repression or repression of certain experiences could lead to a great deal of suffering because that which was repressed into the unconscious did not simply disappear. It would remain within the system and influence the conscious experience of the person. By helping the patient bring what had been repressed back to consciousness, it could be recognized and transformed with the awareness and compassion of both analyst and patient; this would free the person from the patterns of thinking, behaving, and experiencing that were bringing them so much pain.

Since its beginnings in the early 1900s, psychodynamic psychology has evolved and grown. New schools of thought have emerged within the discipline and psychoanalysis has changed as well. There have been many prominent psychodynamic healers and theorists, such as Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, and James Hillman, to name just a few. Although there are many differences in worldview, theory, and technique amongst and even within these schools, all are united in the desire to help bring the unconscious to consciousness, not only to alleviate suffering but also to allow people to know themselves more deeply and wholly so that they can live in greater harmony, peace, and fulfilment.

-Written by Hunter Glickstein, Doctoral Intern