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The type of dynamic therapy we choose for each type of patients depends upon the criteria we use to select patients.
Reports on Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy are scarce for adolescents, for whom we need to modify the characteristics of the selection criteria and the therapeutic techniques to address their unique needs.
Many psychoanalysts became dissatisfied with the problems created by the classical techniques, particularly with passivity, with the patient's dependency on the therapist, and with an analysis that becomes “interminable.” Nor do they consider the classical tenets of transference neurosis, regression and pervasive overdetermination as necessary. Consequently, they have been developing briefer dynamic psychotherapies (Alexander, 1946; Davanloo, 1978, 1980; Malan, 1979; Mann, 1973; Marmor, 1979, 1986; Sifneos, 1972). A paradigm of these is Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (STDP).
Psychiatrists who treat adolescents should begin the selection process by a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation and by assessing the patient's dynamics rather than relegating him to a nosologic category. Marmor (1979) condensed five factors essential for selecting patients for any form of dynamic psychotherapy: