Psychodynamic approach as a creative factor in psychopharmacotherapy.

The treatment of psychiatric disorders often consists of a combined approach that integrates both pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. Unfortunately, psychiatric texts and the educational process in psychiatry training do not adequately address the combined approach. There is a lack of information concerned with the psychological aspect of prescribing medications. This is striking since many patients require both treatments. There is an inevitable psychological aspect of the administration of medication in psychiatry, and the meaning ascribed to the prescription of drugs has an impact on doctor-patient relationship. Understanding the psychodynamic issues is crucial for the success of psychopharmacology. Psychodynamic psychopharmacotherapy represents an integration of biological psychiatry and psychodynamic insights and techniques. This approach recognizes that many of the core discoveries of psychoanalysis are powerful factors in the complex relationship between the patient, the illness, the doctor, and the medications. Scientific pharmacotherapy is, as it should be, based upon patients' responses to treatments of specific target conditions. Enduring personality traits are being increasingly incorporated as targets for pharmacotherapy. However, in the real world of psychiatric practice we see that transference issues and a patient's character or set of personality traits have a greater impact on the selection, dosage, tolerability, and treatment outcome than is generally recognized or admitted. In contemporary psychiatry, a psychodynamic perspective must be preserved. Without it, meaning will be lost, and both diagnostic understanding and informed treatment planning will suffer.