The state of the evidence base for psychodynamic psychotherapy for children and adolescents

This article reviews outcomes of psychodynamic psychotherapy (PP) for children and adolescents reported in articles identified by a comprehensive review of the literature on treatment evaluations of psychological and medical interventions for mental disorders in pediatric populations. The review identified 48 reports based on 33 studies. While there is evidence of substantial clinical gains associated with PP, in almost all the studies, when contrasted with family-based interventions, PP fares no better and appears to produce outcomes with some delay relative to family-based therapies. Further rigorous evaluations are needed, but evidence to date suggests that the context in which PP is delivered should be extended from the traditional context of individual therapy and parents should be included in the treatment of children

Evolution in the Brain, Evolution in the Mind: The Hierarchical Brain and the Interface between Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience

This article first aims to demonstrate the different ways the work of the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson influenced Freud. It argues that these can be summarized in six points. It is further argued that the framework proposed by Jackson continued to be pursued by twentieth-century neuroscientists such as Papez, MacLean and Panksepp in terms of tripartite hierarchical evolutionary models. Finally, the account presented here aims to shed light on the analogies encountered by psychodynamically oriented neuroscientists, between contemporary accounts of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system on the one hand, and Freudian models of the mind on the other. These parallels, I will suggest, are not coincidental. They have a historical underpinning, as both accounts most likely originate from a common source: John Hughlings Jackson's tripartite evolutionary hierarchical view of the brain

From Vital to Psychic Energies: A Study on the Influence of the Debate Mechanism-Vitalism in Psychology and Psychoanalysis

This works traces the rise and development of the notion of “psychic energy”, from its origins in the emerging 18th century life sciences in Germany and France to psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is an inherently interdisciplinary science (Kitcher, 1992), and a rich and long tradition of historical scholarship has aptly demonstrated how psychoanalytic ideas were influenced by those stemming from disciplines such as psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, sexology, and neurology. A primary aim in this project is to include physiology as another important historical source. The main goal is therefore to provide a transdisciplinary study that situates the birth of psychoanalysis within debates in the history of biology, beyond those that focused on the role of evolutionary thinking (Ritvo, 1990; Sulloway, 1979). The historical literature on the origin of the life sciences has generally focused on the different uses (or instead, rejection) of the teleological argument of a final cause responsible for organising and guiding the form and functions of organisms. The debate was centred on the notion of “vital force” – vaguely understood as an abstract principle, analogous to Newtonian forces, which directed inert matter thus providing it with the form and functions found in organisms. This debate, classically described as one between mechanism vs. vitalism, was carried further into the 19th century in different directions. The thesis traces how the debate has impacted the early formulations of psychoanalysis, in particular the metapsychological models, by focusing on the inheritance of propositions deriving from physiology, via Breuer and Freud’s engagement with the Berlin Biophysics Group and other life science theorists of the time