Principles of Neuropsychodynamic Therapy

Abstract

Neuropsychodynamics refers to the social embedded brain and the relation between the individual brain, environment, and the subjective experience of the personal identity over time. We do not know how the brain transforms its neuronal activities into mental features, but we know that it is a fact.

In many psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other psychiatric illnesses, we assume abnormalities of the spatiotemporal self. Many symptoms, not all, of these diseases can be seen as an attempt to reorganize the self and its brain-based spatiotemporal relation to the world.

This approach offers novel treatment options with the aim to develop strategies to modulate the spatiotemporal structure of the resting state’s alignment to the world by applying spatially and temporally modulating stimuli. This could be done by, e.g., creative therapies and other neuropsychodynamic therapeutic methods in the sense of top-down modulation. In the sense of bottom-up modulation, this could also be done by psychopharmaceuticals, magnetic stimulation, etc.

The main question is how functional activity of the brain is influenced by therapeutic methods. The basis of neuropsychodynamic treatment is the patient-therapist relationship with their fitting, transference, and countertransference. Neurobiological and psychological changes go hand in hand and influence each other.