What is it ?

 This approach sees mental disorders as coming from the unconscious mind usually from repressed thoughts or emotions from the patient’s childhood.  The therapist revisits these unconscious ideas and helps the patient to deal with them  The key to this type of therapy is the trust established between the patient and client. The therapist replaces the punishing conscience (super-ego) with something more supportive

 When we sleep, the ego’s defences are more relaxed, allowing unconscious impulses to enter in the form of dreams.  However, as this is threatening, thoughts are disguised as symbols.  Therapists aim to transfer the manifest content (what we remember from the dream) to the latent content (what it actually means).

 This is through dream work and can take some time and a lot of dreams need to be recorded to be more accurate about what they mean.  There are many interpretive ways that people have created to transfer the manifest content to latent content, such as dream dictionaries.

 This treatment aims to access the repressed material by lowering the ego’s defence mechanisms. The therapist allows the patient to talk freely about experiences in both the present and the past.  Free association was developed to change the thought patterns created by the patient in the unconscious mind, for example repression, displacement and denial.  This treatment aims to allow the patient to cure themselves by challenging their own perception of events.

 This treatment type is very expensive and is a longer term commitment.  It can prove disruptive to the patients life and therefore the effectiveness is questioned.  It is a reductionist approach as it claims that only psycho-sexual development is to blame for the development of abnormality.

 Freud said that due to the nature of mental illness it would be difficult to establish an appropriate therapeutic relationship with psychotic patients.  However, Fromm-Riechman tried to modify psychoanalysis for Sz patients

 Gottdiener (2000) - meta analysis of 37 studies found 66% of those receiving psychotherapy improved. However, improvement usually coincides with taking medication at the same time (May 1968)

 Tarrier suggests that the over stimulation provided by such therapy makes Sz patients even worse!!!  PORT – the Sz Patient Outcome Research Team agree –they suggest some forms of psychotherapy are harmful to some Sz patients.  APA (USA) only recommend it together with medication as part of a combination therapy  Sweet animation Sweet animation