Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: A Neurobiological Perspective

Abstract

Background: An  understanding  of  how psychotherapeutic interventions change  the brain reflects the constant tension between the psychological and  biological  explanations  of  human  behavior.  Psychodynamic psychotherapy  has  its  origins  in  psychoanalytic theory and is, above all, a way of thinking  that  includes  unconscious  conflicts,  failures  and distortions  of  intrapsy -chic  structures,  mental  representations  of self and others, which emphasizes the communicative function (between patient and therapist) of the symptom (and behavior).

Aims and Methods: With a non systematic review  this  paper  intended to  understand the cerebral impact of psychodynamic interventions, from a neuroscientific perspective of some psychoanalytic concepts.Results and

Conclusions: Psychotherapy, as a platform for the acquisition of new skills and  more  adaptive  behavior,  impacting brain function as it alters gene expression, protein biosynthesis and causing changes in brain  function  and  anatomical  structure, measurable by the latest techniques of neuroimaging. Currently, there is evidence that psychotherapeutic intervention is biopsychosocial by nature and that all the functions of the mind reflect brain activity.