Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD), Foundations and Practical Handbook

This volume presents an operationalized psychodynamic approach to diagnosis, based on a multiaxial system. In this way it mediates between exclusively descriptive systems such as DSM-IV and ICD-10 on the one hand and psychodynamic diagnoses on the other.

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The diagnosis of mental and psychosomatic disorders is dominated by operationalized systems of diagnosis, the most important of which are the DSM-IV and ICD-10 classifications. Unfortunately, psychodynamic aspects were neglected during this purely phenomenology-based operationalization. At the same time, psychoanalytical diagnostics (in the stricter sense of the term) has remained full of contradictions. This volume aims to resolve this dilemma. It presents an operationalized psychodynamic approach to diagnosis, based on a multiaxial system. In this way it mediates between exclusively descriptive systems such as DSM-IV and ICD-10 on the one hand and psychodynamic diagnoses on the other. The Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnostics (OPD) system is based on five axes: experience of illness and prerequisites for treatment; relation; conflict; structure; and psychic and psychosomatic disorders. It is the fifth axis that allows the OPD diagnosis to be related to the ICD-10 and DSM IV classifications. A diagnostic questionnaire and assessment forms (reprinted in the book) should simplify the use of the OPD in practice.