Verke Editorial

Psychodynamic Therapy (PDT)

Understand why you feel this way — and heal at the root

Psychodynamic work pays close attention to the recurring patterns in your relationships and inner life — often rooted in earlier experiences — and helps you bring what's usually half-conscious into clearer view, so it stops driving behavior on autopilot. At Verke, Anna is the coach for people who notice the same story showing up in different rooms and want to understand why, not just manage it.

Psychodynamic therapy explores the repeated patterns in your relationships and inner life — the ones that keep showing up even when you thought you'd put them down. These patterns are often rooted in earlier experiences you didn't choose, and they run on autopilot until someone helps you bring them into clearer view. PDT isn't about blaming your childhood; it's about noticing what the younger parts of you are still carrying.

Where CBT works at the level of thoughts and behaviors, PDT works at the level of meaning — why a particular kind of closeness feels unsafe, why anger becomes tears or silence, why the thing you say you want keeps slipping away. The mechanism is insight combined with emotional reworking: once the pattern is seen and felt with a safer companion, it loses some of its grip.

PDT has a substantial peer-reviewed evidence base that has grown rapidly in the past decade, including head-to-head trials against CBT and recent randomized trials of internet-delivered PDT.

• Childhood patterns you keep re-enacting in adult relationships
• Inner conflicts — wanting something and sabotaging it at the same time
• Emotions that feel blocked, delayed, or hard to name
• Identity questions: who am I underneath the roles I play?
• Grief — fresh, old, or the kind you never fully let yourself have
• Relationship dynamics where the same argument keeps arriving in new clothes

Less used for time-pressured symptom relief — for that, see CBT.

The coach specializing in Psychodynamic Therapy

Anna

Psychodynamic specialist

Anna creates a supportive environment for exploring unresolved emotions and past experiences, helping clients gain deeper self-understanding and address the root causes of their current challenges. Read more

Start with Anna — no signup needed>

Verke's PDT coach is Anna. Her style is reflective and exploratory rather than prescriptive — she notices patterns with you, asks the question underneath the question, and gives the feeling underneath the feeling room to be named. Anna works in text or voice, with voice calls capped at twenty minutes and a written summary returned to the chat so you can revisit it. She remembers what you've been exploring across weeks and months, in 55 languages, whenever you want to pick up the thread.

In a 2013 multicenter randomized controlled trial of 495 adults with social anxiety disorder, Leichsenring and colleagues compared manualized CBT against manualized psychodynamic therapy and a waitlist control. Both active arms were efficacious; long-term outcomes were comparable, with CBT showing faster symptom reduction at termination and PDT catching up over follow-up (Leichsenring et al., 2013).

A 2017 randomized trial from Per Carlbring's research network at Stockholm University evaluated internet-delivered affect-focused psychodynamic therapy for social anxiety. Johansson and colleagues reported a large between-group effect (Cohen's d = 1.05) against a waitlist, with gains maintained at two-year follow-up — evidence that the modality translates into digital delivery (Johansson et al., 2017).

A 2024 trial — also from Carlbring's research network — compared guided and unguided internet-delivered PDT for social anxiety. Lindegaard and colleagues found both formats outperformed waitlist, with guided delivery producing a large effect (d = 1.07) and unguided delivery a medium-to-large effect (d = 0.61). That matters for scalable digital coaching where full human guidance isn't always available (Lindegaard et al., 2024).

A 2023 umbrella review in World Psychiatry consolidated the evidence base and concluded that PDT now meets updated empirically-supported criteria for depression, anxiety disorders, and somatic symptom disorders — a significant consolidation of decades of research (Leichsenring et al., 2023).

How is PDT different from CBT?

CBT works mostly in the present — what you're thinking, what you're avoiding, what small experiment could test it. PDT works at the level of pattern and meaning — why a particular situation feels familiar, what younger version of you might still be running it. The two complement each other; many people benefit from both at different stages.

Is PDT the same as Freudian therapy?

No. Modern PDT evolved well beyond Freud and set aside most of his specific theories. What remains is the core intuition that early relationships and unspoken feelings shape current patterns. Contemporary PDT is structured, time-limited, and evidence-based — very different from the open-ended couch stereotype.

Do I have to talk about my childhood?

Only when it's relevant. PDT follows your material — if the pattern you're noticing has roots earlier in your life, Anna will gently bring that in. If it doesn't, she won't force it. The point is understanding the pattern, not rehashing a timeline for its own sake.

Is PDT evidence-based?

Yes. The past decade has produced head-to-head RCTs against CBT, internet-delivered trials with large effect sizes, and a 2023 umbrella review that formally established PDT as an empirically supported approach for depression, anxiety, and somatic symptom presentations. It's among the better-studied depth-oriented modalities.

How long does PDT take?

Shorter than the stereotype. Most contemporary PDT studies use formats of 16 to 30 sessions, and brief PDT (around 10 sessions) has research support for some presentations. With Verke you aren't counting sessions — you can work at the pace that fits, but a real shift usually emerges over a few months of consistent conversation.

• Why do I self-sabotage? The pattern beneath the pattern
• What psychodynamic therapy actually does (and why it's not what you think)
• Why am I attracted to the wrong people? The pattern isn't random
• How childhood patterns show up in adult relationships