Abstract (EN):
Background: An understanding of how psychotherapeutic interventions change the brain reflects the constant tension between the psychological and biological explanations of human behavior. Psychodynamic psychotherapy has its origins in psychoanalytic theory and is, above all, a way of thinking that includes unconscious conflicts, failures and distortions of intrapsychic structures, mental representations of self and others, which emphasizes the communicative function (between patient and therapist) of the symptom (and behavior). Aims and Methods: With a non systematic review this paper intended to understand the cerebral impact of psychodynamic inter- ventions, from a neuroscientific perspective of some psychoanalytic concepts. Results and Conclusions: Psychotherapy, as a platform for the acquisition of new skills and more adaptive behavior, impacting brain function as it alters gene expression, protein biosynthesis and causing changes in brain function and anatomical structure, measurable by the latest techniques of neuroimaging. Currently, there is evidence that psychotherapeutic intervention is biopsychosocial by nature and that all the functions of the mind reflect brain activity.
Language:
Portuguese
Type (Professor's evaluation):
Scientific