Ambulante psychoanalytische Behandlung depressiver Störungen

Abstract

The author points out the variety of depressive disorders concerning etiology, pathogenesis, course and psychodynamics. First he discusses the classical psychodynamic models: super-Ego and guilt-depression, dependent depression, ego-depression enclosing help- and hopelessness, narcissistic depression and the capacity to be depressed. He describes his understanding of the core conflict in depression. Starting from an extensive case example he discusses the relevant questions of diagnosis and indication from a psychoanalytic viewpoint. Regarding to the author, the evaluation of personality structure and individual constellation of conflicts within every singular patient is decisive. He summarizes the differential indication for psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and supportive psychotherapy for the depressive patient. Coming back to the case example he describes the course of a relatively short psychoanalytic treatment and discusses questions of therapeutic technique. Finally he tackles the competition between psychotherapeutic schools in the adequate treatment of depressive patients and shows, why it is appropriate to have different approaches aiming at the highly varying subgroups of depressive patients.

Keywords:

Depressive disorders, dysthymia, psychodynamic models, personality structure, psychoanalytic treatment, differential indication -