ABSTRACT
The history of psychodynamic therapies goes back at least to the time of Mesmer, but psychodynamic medicine really burst on the scene in the latter part of the 19th century with the work of Jean-Martin Charcot and Pierre Janet in France and Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud in Austria. One of the main aims of psychodynamic psychotherapy is to attempt to reveal what is unconscious and thereby decrease the power of the internal conflicts influencing our lives in maladaptive ways. Transference in psychodynamic psychotherapy is one of the key phenomena that helps bring about change. In transference, clients begin to transfer, or project onto the therapist, thoughts and emotional responses that are similar to how they have responded in the past to significant others or past fantasized others. Defense mechanisms operate on various levels, from unconscious to conscious.
