title: Brief dynamic psychotherapy: toward a more comprehensive model.
abstract: Previous schools of brief dynamic psychotherapy, however valuable, have rejected the majority of potential patients. When the brief therapy method was experimentally extended to include most who applied, a new, more comprehensive model emerged. I discovered that many patients arrive in therapy not simply with a focal issue but, beneath that, with a pathogenic belief, i.e., a negative conviction about self engendered by unconscious guilt toward primary objects. I have found this pathogenic belief to be a most economic subject for brief therapy. Moreover, unverbalized but specific relationship interventions often represent a more effective treatment strategy to combat pathogenic belief than does interpretation alone. Critical review of previous work and a case illustration demonstrate that the new model speaks to important controversies in the theory and the practice of brief psychotherapy.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D006279:Health Maintenance Organizations; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009769:Object Attachment; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D011614:Psychotherapy, Brief / Q000379:methods*; D014167:Transference, Psychology