Psychodynamic Approach Essay

As a young child, my grandfather told me there are two types of people in the world: those who live life in black and white, and those who live in the gray area. While life in black and white is very straight-forward, to the point, and consistent the gray area is the place to be. Though it may be viewed as wishy-washy and inconsistent, the gray area provides consideration of extenuating circumstances. The gray area is where compassion, understanding, and kindness thrive. So it would only make sense for me to implement a “gray area” tactic to being a clinical psychologist. The best approach for me would be a combination of psychodynamic therapy and client-centered therapy, though erring more on the side of the former rather than the latter.
A psychodynamic approach focuses heavily on uncovering the motivations behind each action and thus implementing changes to the problematic actions, thoughts, or …show more content…
A “methodologically rigorous meta-analysis” issued by the Cochrane Library found that patients with a variety of mental disorders who received short-term psychodynamic therapy yielded great symptom improvement with a large effect size; when a long-term follow-up was performed, the effect size increased dramatically (Shedler, 2011). Results from a meta-analysis in the British Journal of Psychiatry suggested that long-term psychodynamic therapy is “superior to less intensive forms” of therapy in complex mental disorders (Leichsenring & Rabung, 2011). Backing up client-based therapy with research is challenging due to the fact that it is lacking in standardized outcome measurements and thus it is more difficult to discern if it is truly effective. An analysis in the Journal of Psychotherapy Research concluded that treatment reduced depressive symptoms and active interventions at various points during treatment hastened improvement (Greenberg & Watson,