Psychodynamic Psychiatry

Psycho-dynamic psychiatry combines psychoanalytic principles with DSM-5 operational thinking. Major psychiatric disorders and personality dis-harmonies are presented psycho-dynamically, with an emphasis on intrapsychic functioning, on conflictuality, Freudian and neo-Freudian principles. The therapeutic framework as a landmark in the mind of the specialist is the reference to which psychiatric thinking appeals. The concepts of transference and counter-transference are essential, the relationship being healing through the power of containment of the specialist's mind, by referring to significant imago and to the stress-diary relationship. The psychoanalytic concepts of narcissism, symbiosis, twinning, false self, projection, projective identification, cleavage, dissociation are related to psychotic, neurotic, borderline, perverse functioning, in psycho-dynamic vision, but keeping the reference of international psychiatric diagnostic classifications. The book represents an interface between psychiatry and psychoanalysis, showing that the psychiatric patient is in a living dynamic, "an organism" whose history is written and rewritten according to the doctor-patient dynamic.