What are the psychodynamic goals?

• A. Make the unconscious conscious and strengthen the ego
• B. Increase behavioral compliance
• C. Improve exam performance
• D. Enhance dream recall

Answer: (A)

Psychodynamic therapy focuses on uncovering unconscious processes that shape thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The best goal is to bring unconscious material into conscious awareness and to strengthen the ego so the person can navigate reality more effectively. By making the unconscious conscious, underlying motivations, conflicts, and defenses become understandable, reducing their automatic influence and allowing for more deliberate, voluntary choices. Strengthening the ego supports reality testing, impulse control, and adaptive coping, helping the individual manage internal conflicts and relate more healthily to others. Techniques like free association, dream interpretation, and examining transference are used to access hidden material and illuminate how past experiences influence current behavior. The other options don’t fit as the overarching aim: increasing behavioral compliance is more aligned with behavior-focused approaches, improving exam performance isn’t a therapeutic goal, and dream recall is a method used but not the primary objective.