Psychodynamic Therapy: Definition, Uses, Effectiveness

Key Takeaways

• Psychodynamic therapy can help with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and more by understanding subconscious thoughts and emotions.
• This therapy is often shorter than traditional psychoanalysis and can sometimes be as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy.

Psychodynamic therapy is a form of talk therapy focused on learning how the person’s subconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories are affecting their current behavior. With this deepened insight and self-awareness, they can develop coping techniques and achieve therapeutic goals such as improving relationships and making better choices.

Psychodynamic therapy is rooted in psychoanalytic theory but is often a less intensive, shorter process than traditional psychoanalysis. Whereas psychoanalysis places much emphasis on the patient-therapist relationship, psychodynamic therapy also looks into a patient’s relationships with other people.

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Uses

This approach to psychotherapy can help you cope with mental or emotional distress and gain self-awareness, insight, and emotional growth.

Although similar to psychoanalysis, it is often less frequent and of shorter duration. Like other forms of therapy, it can be used to treat a variety of mental health concerns, such as:

Although cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a popular and effective approach, evidence suggests that psychodynamic therapy can be just as effective for many conditions. Online psychodynamic therapy may be as effective as online CBT.

Important Characteristics

People sometimes act or respond in ways they don’t understand. Psychodynamic therapy helps people come to understand the sources of their feelings and thoughts by:

• Identifying patterns. Psychodynamic therapy helps people learn to recognize patterns in behavior and relationships. People often develop characteristic ways of responding to problems without really being aware of these tendencies. Learning to spot them, however, can help people find new approaches to coping with problems.
• Understanding emotions. Psychodynamic therapy is useful for exploring and understanding emotions. This new insight helps people recognize patterns that have contributed to dysfunction and then work toward change.
• Improving relationships. Relationships with others are a key focus of psychodynamic therapy. In working with a therapist, people can come to understand their responses to others.

The therapeutic relationship itself can serve as a way to look into relationships through a process known as transference. This helps people explore their typical responses to others and find ways to improve their relationships.

How Effective Is It?

Assessing the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy presents some challenges, but research does suggest that it can be useful in the treatment of a variety of psychological problems.

One reason that it may be difficult to assess the full efficacy of psychodynamic therapy is that many of the changes it produces can be tough to measure.

While it is relatively easy to measure changes in specific acute symptoms, it is much more difficult to measure underlying personality changes, noted researcher Jonathan Shedler in a press release by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Despite this difficulty, research supports the efficacy and use of psychodynamic therapy to treat a variety of conditions.

• One notable review published in the journal American Psychologist concluded that the evidence supports the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy.
• Another study found that psychodynamic therapy could be at least as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).
• A 2017 review published in the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that psychodynamic therapy was as effective as other established treatments. However, the authors of the study suggested that further research was needed to determine who benefited the most from this type of treatment.

What You Can Expect

If you decide to try psychodynamic therapy, you may meet with your therapist weekly to a few time each week. Each session typically lasts for around 45 minutes and you will continue to see your therapist for several months. In some cases, you may keep having sessions for a year or longer.

During psychodynamic therapy, people are often encouraged to talk about anything that might be on their minds. This might include things they are currently experiencing or memories of things that have happened in the past. 

One form of psychodynamic therapy known as brief psychodynamic therapy is designed to produce results more rapidly, often in 25 to 30 sessions. In this shorter-term form of treatment, people may initially determine a particularly emotional area where they want to focus on.

Long-term psychodynamic therapy may take a year or longer and involve 50 or more therapy sessions.

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

1. Driessen E, Van HL, Peen J, Don FJ, Twisk JWR, Cuijpers P, Dekker JJM. Cognitive-behavioral versus psychodynamic therapy for major depression: Secondary outcomes of a randomized clinical trial. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2017;85(7):653-663. doi: 10.1037/ccp0000207

2. Bögels SM, Wijts P, Oort FJ, Sallaerts SJ. Psychodynamic psychotherapy versus cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder: an efficacy and partial effectiveness trial. Depress Anxiety. 2014;31(5):363-73. doi: 10.1002/da.22246

3. Lindegaard T, Hesslow T, Nilsson M, et al. Internet-based psychodynamic therapy vs cognitive behavioural therapy for social anxiety disorder: A preference study. Internet Interv. 2020;20:100316. Published 2020 Mar 18. doi:10.1016/j.invent.2020.100316

4. American Psychological Association. Psychodynamic psychotherapy brings lasting benefits through self-knowledge.

5. Shedler J. The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Am Psychol. 2010;65(2):98-109. doi: 10.1037/a0018378

6. Driessen E, Van HL, Peen J, Don FJ, Twisk JWR, Cuijpers P, Dekker JJM. Cognitive-behavioral versus psychodynamic therapy for major depression: Secondary outcomes of a randomized clinical trial. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2017 Jul;85(7):653-663. doi:10.1037/ccp0000207

7. Steinert C, Munder T, Rabung S, Hoyer J, Leichsenring F. Psychodynamic therapy: as efficacious as other empirically supported treatments? A meta-analysis testing equivalence of outcomes. Am J Psychiatry. 2017 Oct 1;174(10):943-953. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17010057

8. Ho C, Adcock L. Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for the Treatment of Mental Illness: A Review of Clinical Effectiveness and Guidelines [Internet]. Ottawa (ON): Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health.

9. Bhar SS, Thombs BD, Pignotti M, et al. Is longer-term psychodynamic psychotherapy more effective than shorter-term therapies? Review and critique of the evidence [published correction appears in Psychother Psychosom. 2010 Jun;79(4):216]. Psychother Psychosom. 2010;79(4):208-216. doi:10.1159/000313689

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the “Everything Psychology Book.”

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