IS-TDP

The second issue is a subject issue which is, almost exclusively, dedicated to a very important psychoanalytically founded form of psychotherapy. The form of psychotherapy is presented almost completely in all important aspects. It is the Intensive Psychodynamic Short Term Therapy of Davanloo. The articles were written by his european collegues from Switzerland and Germany in cooperation with him. In that way they show the authorized representation of this therapy. For many years, psychoanalysis was lacking efficient short term therapies and creative variations of therapeutic procedures. Therefore it seems quite significant to make new ways of psychoanalytical psychotherapy known. The upcoming issues will again contain combined contributions depending on entry at the editor’s office. They will contain original empirical works and reviews as well as essays regarding important and up-to-date themes.

Somatization, anxiety, depression and personality disorders are common features of many patients with chronic headaches. Intensive short-term dynamic psycho- therapy (ISTDP) is a brief therapy method developed specifically to treat patients with this cluster of somatic problems, symptoms and maladaptive behaviours through focusing on how the patient handles emotional experiences. It also contains a direct method of assessing the somatic discharge pathways of both emotions and anxiety, thus allowing direct observation of somatization in the case of many chronic headache sufferers. In this review, we summarize the extant literature on emotional factors in headache, review the evidence for short-term dynamic therapies in somatic problems and describe the assessment and treat- ment method of ISTDP we use routinely with chronic headache sufferers.