Freud’s Talk-Show Therapy Makes a Comeback

Freud’s popularity generally went away with the horse and buggy when the world turned to technology for all the answers and his “talking cures” for psychoanalytical behavior became old news. A new study conducted in Germany looked back at 23 studies of 1,053 patients with a variety of mental issues from anxiety to depression, anorexia, and borderline personality disorder.
Known as psychodynamic therapy, the idea has morphed from its roots in Sigmund Freud’s controversial book of analysis The Interpretation of Dreams from 1900 when he laid out the blueprint for how we think of psychoanalysis. Without Freud we wouldn’t discuss someone having an inflated head as the word “ego,” and we probably wouldn’t look inside ourselves to solve most of our mental deficiencies. Freud taught that our underlying behavior is a direct result of our thoughts and feelings and that getting to the bottom of those subconscious thoughts and feelings will help alleviate our mental blocks.
The German scientists wrote that psychodynamic therapy—used up to three times per week on patients, sometimes for over a year—was able to relieve some symptoms of mental problems at a significantly higher rate than shorter-term methods. Published on October 1 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers called for more testing and practice of this therapy before it becomes part of our horse and buggy past for good. Their objective in this study was to investigate the effects of long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (LTPP) in order to fully examine the results of personality disorders, disorders of the mind, depression and anxiety disorders.
Generally there are four types of psychoanalytic therapy with the most popular being cognitive behavioral therapy in which new U.S. studies have shown help children and teens both individual settings and group therapy sessions to reduce stress, depression and other mental traumas they may be trying to work out. The popularity of this cognitive behavioral type of therapy is also convenient as the average number of sessions anyone involved in this rapid therapy attends is 16. Since the high praise of shorter-term therapies has been standard, long-term therapy like Freud’s has long been deemed unnecessary. University of Wisconsin’s chairman of the counseling psychology department Bruce E. Wampold considers this new study to be on its way to proving the standard wrong, “… this review certainly does seem to contradict the notion that cognitive or other short-term therapies are better than any others,” he said, “When it’s done well, psychodynamic therapy appears to be just as effective as any other for some patients, and this strikes me as a turning point.”.
Research took place at the University of Giessen by Dr. Falk Leichsenring and at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf by Sven Rabung. Dr. Leichsenring wrote via email message, “Psychodynamic therapy showed significant, large and stable treatment effects which even significantly increased between the end of treatment and follow-up assessment.”
t’s clear that more time and attention is needed to help psychodynamic therapy succeed in a technology-filled world where medical diagnoses can be sent to your iPhone and when cars run out of gas they rely on electricity. Although the research wasn’t specifically noted how much time is needed for psychodynamic therapy to succeed, the studies were done using varying lengths of time and with so little evidence to look back on, the research needs to be explored further. A psychiatrist from Columbia, Dr. Andrew J. Gerber, said, “this paper suggests that you’ve got to get into longer-term therapy to make improvements last.” Even in an online world where you can attend classes over the internet never meeting your teacher, do your grocery and Christmas shopping without leaving the comfort of your desk chair, and date without having to pay for dinner—if coffee shops are any indication—Freud’s talk-show type of therapy is still alive and well.