The psychotherapies

An outline of Freudian and behavioural psychotherapy is discussed. Various aspects of the techniques of brief psychotherapy and its relevance to modern day psychiatry and general practice is emphasised. Freudian techniques include the exploration of the unconscious childhood conflicts, transference analysis, use of interpretation and working through. Recent revisions to Freudian theories include the object relation approach, therapeutic use of counter-transference and group psychotherapy. Short term dynamic psychotherapy as outlined by Marmour, Mann, Sifneos and Bloom is briefly reviewed. Behavioural psychotherapy, including pavlovian and operant conditioning and Bandura's social learning theory is described. The author also highlights on the recent attempt to integrate supportive psychotherapy within dynamic psychotherapy and the need to modify Western psychotherapy to suit Eastern cultures. The need for cost-containment is likely to shape the type of psychotherapy that will be offered in the future, such as short-term as opposed to long term, group therapy as opposed to individual.