From Fragmentation to Coherence: Psychodynamic Psychotherapy for Psychosis through the Lens of Metacognition

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has produced important theories that help explain the radical alterations in self-experience central for persons experiencing psychosis. These concepts have led to important clinical developments, case studies, and some research on the efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy for psychosis (Gottdiener, 2006). However, psychodynamic psychotherapy has struggled to produce operationalized constructs to measure how it enhances self-development and the therapeutic mechanisms of action that facilitate these changes. Outside of psychoanalysis, some researchers have focused on the construct of metacognition (i.e. thinking about thinking) and its relevance to understanding psychosis. Proponents of this paradigm have created an integrative, exploratory therapy (MERIT, Lysaker & Klion, 2017) that blends various therapeutic traditions that overlap with psychodynamic psychotherapy and mentalization (Ridenour, Knauss, & Hamm, 2019). In this paper, we will present a short-term intensive case study of psychodynamic psychotherapy with a young man experiencing psychosis in residential treatment and then analyze the therapy through the lens of metacognition to provide constructs that illustrate the ways that it promotes recovery and self-integration.