Key Components of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Insights From Jonathan Shedler

Psychodynamic psychotherapy is grounded in the understanding that lasting psychological change involves more than symptom relief. It requires attention to the emotional, relational, and often unconscious patterns that shape how a person experiences themselves and others. Jonathan Shedler, PhD, has written with unusual clarity about these processes, helping articulate what makes psychodynamic psychotherapy both distinct and effective.

In his influential paper, The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Shedler describes core elements of psychodynamic work and demonstrates that its benefits are substantial and enduring -

often continuing to deepen after therapy has ended (Shedler, 2010).

Core Components of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Focus on emotional experience.Psychodynamic therapy places central importance on helping patients identify, experience, and make sense of emotions that may be avoided, disowned, or expressed indirectly through symptoms. Emotional awareness is not viewed as secondary to change, but as a primary driver of it.

Attention to avoidance and defenses.Rather than confronting symptoms alone, psychodynamic therapy explores how individuals protect themselves from painful thoughts, feelings, or relational experiences. These patterns of avoidance are approached with curiosity, not judgment, and understood as adaptations that once served an important purpose.

Identification of recurring themes.Shedler emphasizes the importance of recognizing repetitive patterns in relationships, self-concept, and emotional life. These themes often operate outside conscious awareness yet exert a powerful influence on behavior and choice.

Focus on relationships, past and present.Psychodynamic psychotherapy attends to how early relational experiences shape current ways of relating. Importantly, these patterns often emerge within the therapeutic relationship itself, offering a live context in which they can be understood and transformed.

Use of the therapeutic relationship as a source of insight.What unfolds between patient and therapist is not incidental. It provides valuable information about how the patient manages closeness, dependence, conflict, and agency. Exploring these dynamics thoughtfully is a central mechanism of change.

Respect for the inner life.Fantasies, dreams, internal narratives, and subjective meanings are treated as psychologically meaningful rather than incidental. They offer access to unconscious motivations and conflicts that cannot always be reached through rational discussion alone.

Why Shedler’s Work Matters to Me

Jonathan Shedler’s work has been especially meaningful to me as a clinician. He has a rare ability to speak clearly and directly about psychological processes that are often difficult to name - unconscious experience, emotional life, and the mechanisms of real change. His writing gives language to what many psychodynamic therapists recognize intuitively from clinical work but struggle to communicate succinctly. I find his work grounding and clarifying, offering a way to describe the depth and rigor of psychodynamic psychotherapy without oversimplifying it.

A Model of Enduring Change

Taken together, these elements describe a form of psychotherapy that aims not simply to reduce symptoms, but to expand a person’s capacity to understand themselves, tolerate emotion, and engage more fully in relationships. As Shedler’s research highlights, this depth-oriented work supports change that is not only meaningful, but lasting.