The Shyness & Social Anxiety Workbook
108including psychoanalysis, are concerned with helping individuals understand deep-rooted 
unconscious conﬂicts that are presumed to cause or contribute to their psychological 
problems. For example, Freud proposed that depression can occur as a response to 
having unconscious aggressive thoughts or feelings toward a loved one. Because such 
feelings are viewed as unacceptable by the individual, he or she is very motivated to 
keep such thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness. According to Freud, 
rather than allowing the aggressive thoughts to surface, the individual may turn those 
angry feelings inward, leading to feelings of self-hatred and worthlessness, which are 
often features of depression.
There are many newer forms of psychodynamic therapy (most psychodynamic psy -
chotherapists no longer accept all of Freud’s ideas), though the focus of these treatments 
often remains on recounting early childhood experiences, interpreting unconscious expe -
rience (such as dreams), and helping individuals to understand the unconscious motiva -
tions for their behavior. Although psychodynamic psychotherapies remain popular, they 
have gradually lost ground to other forms of therapy, including cognitive and behavioral 
therapies. Some reasons for the decline of psychodynamic psychotherapies include the 
relative lack of research supporting many of the underlying theoretical assumptions, as 
well as a lack of research demonstrating the effectiveness of this form of treatment for 
many speciﬁc problems, including social anxiety.
Despite these criticisms, psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic psychotherapies 
have made considerable contributions to the understanding and treatment of psycho -
logical problems. For example, these were the ﬁrst treatments based on the assumption 
that simply talking to another person can lead to psychological changes. In addition,