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What is Psychodynamic Diagnosis?

When dealing with different emotional issues on a daily basis, we realize the importance of considering the complexity of emotional, physical and social patterns of the patient, so besides helping him/her to diminish symptoms, psychoanalytical psychotherapy improves their emotional and social functioning.

 

 

Mental health implies much more than just the absence of symptoms. It involves the whole mental function of the person, including relationships (emotional depth, range and self-regulation), his/her ability to face certain situations and his/her self-observation skills.

Ignoring the mental complexity of a person is like ignoring what is most important to each of us. After all, our mental complexity is what defines our most human qualities.

So, in order to provide such an approach and fulfill the objectives of psychotherapy, educational, social and medical processes, we require a diagnosis psychodynamically based system which highlights the processes that contribute to a person´s emotional and social functioning.

This system includes different psychological, psychodynamic, psychiatric and neurological tests that, depending on the consulting reason, will be applied to the patient at Psicoanalitica by the adequate expert working with a group of specialists who collaborate with us.

 

Psychodynamic diagnose is focused on mental functioning as a whole. Its approach to mental disorders identifies patterns that capture the quality and degree of impediment that may be present in skills as essential as establishing and maintaining relationships, self-regulation, moods and impulsivity, as well as basic human functions within the family, educational, social and working environments.

 

The identification of patterns of symptoms in psychodynamic diagnose, supplements the descriptions of the DSM and the CIE, with a wider understanding of the unique internal experiences of each patient over his/her problems..

Psychodynamic diagnose is a way to understand mental issues, which tries to include and understand the person as a whole, the deep and superficial aspects of the emotional, cognitive and social aspects, emphasizing both individual differences and common features, using psychological tests and tools specific for each of the different problems we deal with every day.

To integrate the results of the tests and exams we apply, we consider:

  • The functioning of both healthy and disturbed personalities;

  • Individual profiles of mental functioning which include relation, comprehension and expression of emotions, ways of dealing with stress and anxiety, self-observation of emotions and behaviors and moral judgements.

  • Symptomatic patterns, including differences in the personal and subjective experience of symptoms for each person.

 

As we said before, Psychodynamic diagnose supplements current diagnose systems such as DSM and CIE, with a perspective that allows the integration of patterns of symptoms described by them with the description and classification of personality patterns, related social and emotional skills, unique mental profiles and the personal experience of the symptoms.

This kind of diagnose provides a work frame not only useful in the therapeutic context, but also in the school, work and medical ones, therefore allowing us to improve our approach to each patient and to understand the biological and psychological origins of good and bad mental health and the way each individual experiences all of it.

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