Brief individual psychodynamic psychotherapy 

Brief dynamic psychotherapy is an important treatment for numerous disorders, primarily the adjustment, anxiety, and mood disorders. Both alone and in combination with medication brief dynamic psychotherapy is an effective part of the treatment armamentarium. Clinicians should be trained in the brief as well as the longer term treatments and their use as brief, intermittent, and maintenance treatments. Skill in the longer term psychotherapies is important to developing skill in the brief dynamic psychotherapy where the needs for rapid establishment of the therapeutic alliance and the accurate assessment of transference and defence patterns are important. Empirical studies comparing well-defined brief dynamic psychotherapy with cognitive and interpersonal psychotherapies are limited. Future research must address which form of brief psychotherapy may be most helpful for which patient. An individual's preferred learning path-what he or she may see and observe most easily such as thoughts or feelings or interpersonal relations-may be an important variable in determining which brief psychotherapy for which patient. State, trait, and contextual variables will influence this learning modality. The process of change in brief individual psychodynamic psychotherapy, a process of altering neuronal organization through verbal means, is influenced by the patient's diagnosis, medications, past history, cognitive style, developmental stage, and affective availability, as well as the doctor–patient match.