Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy – DIT: Seminar feedback, September 2014

At our seminar on Saturday Beni Woolmer presented a rich and stimulating presentation on DIT – a 16 week model of psychodynamic therapy, now used widely in the NHS for depression and anxiety.  It is great news that the medical profession are learning more widely about therapies in addition to CBT!  I personally have researched, learned about and used in my practice many different models of therapy over the past 20 years and I return over and over again to psychodynamic theory as incisive… and possibly the hardest to learn and use well as a practitioner.

DIT offers an intensive therapy that is highly focussed and structured.  It can illuminate how symptoms, interpersonal functioning, mood and behaviour can be driven by unconscious (and unexamined) psychic patterns.  In our seminar Beni – very capably and with great knowledge and experience – taught us how DIT develops a very focused strategy to help the client learn about and modify one central interpersonal problem which might be causing symptoms such as depression or anxiety. DIT helps the client think differently about themselves (their self image and their feelings/thought)s as well as how they view others, and to modify their interpersonal behaviour. The therapy aims to help clients become aware of his/her fears relating to unconscious feelings and feared consequences of change, and how s/he unconsciously manages these fears.

DIT is not suitable for all clients, and can be demanding for the client as well as the therapist. We learned about criteria for assessment, eg the client’s ability to be reflective (including his/her relationship with the therapist) and to tolerate a degree of mental pain.

Wendy Bramham

September 2014

Recommended reading:

by Alessandra Lemma, Mary Target and Peter Fonagy

Oxford University Press, 2011