Chronic depression associated with early trauma remains one of the most treatment-resistant conditions in mental healthcare. Clinical and empirical findings have increasingly suggested that patients with histories of early trauma may benefit differentially from intensive psychoanalytic treatments compared to symptom-focused or short-term psychotherapies. Our conceptual article aims to elucidate...
Although psychoanalysts are interested in symptom reduction as an outcome, they are looking for instruments to measure sustaining changes in the unconscious mental functioning. In this article it is discussed that conceptually well-founded transformation of manifest dreams analyzed with precise empirical methods could be considered as a promising indicator for such therapeutic changes. We are...
To many psychoanalysts dreams are a central source of knowledge of the unconscious—the specific research object of psychoanalysis. The dialog with the neurosciences, devoted to the testing of hypotheses on human behavior and neurophysiology with objective methods, has added to psychoanalytic conceptualizations on emotion, memory, sleep and dreams, conflict and trauma. To psychoanalysts as well...