http://mindhacks.com/2008/09/30/a-quick-fix-for-the-soul-or-slow-milking-of-the-cash-cow/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Sun, 19 May 2013 05:26:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2008/09/30/a-quick-fix-for-the-soul-or-slow-milking-of-the-cash-cow/#comment-6346 Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:24:06 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/a-quick-fix-for-the-soul-or-slow-milking-of-the-cash-cow/#comment-6346 Hi there,
I think you hit the nail on the head and said exactly what I was trying to say but not quite so eloquently. Indeed, it is dogma which is the difficulty and all new developments should be welcomed and tested.

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2008/09/30/a-quick-fix-for-the-soul-or-slow-milking-of-the-cash-cow/#comment-6345 Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:59:35 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/a-quick-fix-for-the-soul-or-slow-milking-of-the-cash-cow/#comment-6345 Hi there – love the blog and thought I’d post for the first time. I’m a psychiatrist trained in long-term and brief psychodynamic psychotherapy, CBT, IPT and have a great interest in CAT (as it’s a neat hybrid of a few of its predecessors). I’d suggest it’s very much a horses-for-courses issue – some patients, for example those with straightforward anxiety disorders, will do beautifully with an SSRI and CBT; similarly, I’ve a good track record with OCD with a mixture of CBT and response prevention therapy. However with chronic depression and personality disorders, a predominantly psychodynamic psychotherapeutic approach is warranted, although cognitive techniques can be very helpful to manage comorbid anxiety, or to initiate some immediate containment of poorly regulated affect and to manage their emotional response to interpersonal conflict.
For the most seriously traumatised patients – particularly those with very complicated abuse histories where so much damage has been done, and so much panelbeating is required – it’s very difficult to get anywhere without a longer-term dynamic approach.
So as a practitioner of most of these therapies, I’m gratified to see some evidence of one of the cornerstones of my psychotherapeutic practice. However it’s a mistake to conflate psychodynamic psychotherapy with psychoanalysis; strict interpretations of psychotherapeutic technique tend to be dogmatic and reductionistic. Like the CBT practitioner who believes that a short-term cognitive approach is the solution to most mental health problems, so too the psychoanalyst who slavishly adheres to a psychoanalytic model where it’s probably clinically inappropriate is a dogmatic reductionist who puts the needs of their own belief system over and above the needs of their patient. This is a potential trap for the psychoanalyst, the behaviourist, and the CBT practitioner alike.

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