Psychodynamic thinking

Psychodynamic thinking is a style of thinking about human beings and the challenges they face in life that is characteristic of psychoanalysis but can also be found in literature and theatre. This style of thinking emphasises the role of unconscious drives, internal conflicts and early life experiences in understanding people’s motivations and experiences. It has roots in traditions of psychoanalytic thinking and its modern approaches. It can offer hints of how to live such as how to accept suffering and vulnerability, and to build relationships. Psychodynamic thinking offers ways to make sense of the links connecting individual persons to the wider society and culture to which they belong. It may also offer correctives for the shortcomings of the biomedical understanding of mental illness that attempts to arrive at an objective understanding of disorders thereby leaving out subjectivity.