Psychotherapists in the Community: Reported Prototypical Psychodynamic Treatments of Trauma

The effort to categorize psychotherapeutic treatments according to their efficacy has in the past decade led to a number of lists of empirically supported treatments (ESTs; Chambless and Ollendick 2001). With regard to trauma, the primary treatments that have undergone the rigorous empirical testing necessary to be included in lists of ESTs (e.g., Nathan and Gorman 1998; Roth and Fonagy 2005) are largely cognitive—behavioral treatments and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR; Shapiro 1995). Nevertheless, there are many indications that clinicians in the community use psychodynamic psychotherapy for treating trauma. A recent guideline for psychiatrists on the treatment of PTSD notes clinical consensus on the usefulness of psychodynamic psychotherapy in treating certain types of trauma, particularly in cases where interpersonal functioning is substantially impacted (APA 2004). Empirical research reveals that many clinicians in the community employ psychodynamic interventions for trauma (Rodriguez et al. 2003). While a number of authors have described psychodynamic approaches with patients who have experienced trauma (Horowitz 1997; Krupnick 2002; Lindy 1993), little is known about the nature of psychodynamic psychotherapy for trauma as actually conducted by clinicians in the community. The current study sought to gather information about the psychotherapies provided by