Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast Psychodynamic Psychotherapy with Jonathan Shedler, PhD
Apr 5, 2022
The podcast delves into the effectiveness of psychodynamic therapy, exploring severe personality problems, encounters with patients claiming to speak with God, mental health disturbances, therapist-patient relationships, envy and empathy in success sharing, and the dynamics of psychotherapy.
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Camouflaged Destructive Impulses
- Toxic individuals often camouflage their destructive impulses within belief systems and social groups that validate them as virtues.
- Through splitting, projection, and projective identification, they externalize their negative qualities onto others, justifying their harmful actions.
Camouflaged Psychosis
- Jonathan Shedler recounts shadowing a psychiatrist early in his career who struggled to determine if a patient's claim of "speaking to God" was a delusion or a cultural norm.
- This experience highlighted how mental health disturbances can find camouflage in communities that normalize dysfunctional behaviors.
Projective Identification in Therapy
- In therapy, projective identification occurs when a patient projects their feelings onto the therapist, and the therapist unconsciously identifies with and acts on those projections.
- Therapists must recognize and process these countertransference reactions to understand the patient's internal world and relational patterns.