PSYCHO DYNAMIC AND ANALYTIC THERAPY

"It [resistance] opposes every move toward success"(Freud 1929, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety)

Description

Psycho dynamic therapy emphasizes the role of early development and parenting on procrastination. It tries to reenact and rework the interpersonal dramas of childhood (Wolfe & Dryden 1996). It involves deep probing of the past and of the self. It tries to reconstruct the personality by reliving earlier experiences and by working through repressed unconscious conflicts (Corey 1996). It is often intensive and long-term.

Procrastination in particular is related to earlier conflicts with authority or parents. Procrastinators unconsciously delay action due to past conflicts. They avoid the completion of the act because they don't want to be rejected by an authority figure. Procrastination is postulated to be due to arrests in development. They experience conflicts with psychosexual maturation and therefore ambivalence about achievement. They may have unconscious fears of separation from their mothers or fears of mortality and time. They repeat actions in order to avoid symbolized acts(see causes).

When to use it?

Psycho Dynamic therapy is not generally used for procrastination unless more serious problems are suggested. In particular, if procrastination occurs suddenly or in delimited areas, it may be worthwhile to explore the history of procrastination more extensively. When procrastination is related to certain events, individuals, fears of success or failure(Ferrari 1995), a psyco dynamic approach may be effective. Likewise, if a client has a symbolic meaning of the completion of the task at hand, it may be useful to establish the hidden meaning of achievement. Pathological and often adult procrastinators may benefit more from this therapy, as adolescents may procrastinate as a normal phase of development which is not real stagnation (Birner 1993). Psycho Dynamic therapy is not recommended for self-centered, impulsive or severely psychotic clients(Corey 1996).

Effectiveness

Psycho Dynamic therapy is hard to evaluate experimentally. There is some evidence that interpretations of procrastination that identify causal factors clients can easily control i.e. lack of effort and behavioral causes provide better tools for change. Deeper chained stable and internal causes, events in history and external agents may be less amenable to direct control and less change in behaviors result. This effect was not uniform and a few clients improved under deeper types of therapy(Strong et. al. 1979). Therapist interpretations of procrastination helped clients change more effectively than no interpretations at all or simple behavioral self control. There is some evidence that clients who received interpretations about procrastination that were congruent with their own beliefs experienced greater change (Strong 1979). Overall, clinically treated clients are better off than 75% of those untreated (Lubrofsky as cited by Corey 1996).

References and Citations

Ferrari, J.R., Johnson, J.L., & McCown, W.G. (1995). Procrastination and task avoidance. New York, N.Y.: Plenum Press.

Birner, L.(1993).Procrastination: Its role in transference and countertransference. Psychoanalytic review, 80, 541-558.

Corey, G. (1996) Theory and Practice of counseling and psychology, Fifth edition, Brooks Cole publishing company, California.

Woolfe R. & Dryden W. (1996) Handbook of Counseling Psychology, Sage publications, London.

Strong, S.R. & Wambach, C.A., Lopez, F.G. & Cooper, R. K. (1979). Motivational and equipping functions of interpretation in counseling. Journal of counseling Psychology, 26, 98-107.

For more Information:

To a taxonomy of clinical interventions, To the main procrastination research group, To interventions page