Evidence-Based Therapy
Lasting change often means understanding the roots. Psychodynamic psychotherapy helps you make sense of the patterns, relationships, and past experiences that quietly shape how you feel and live today.
WorkCover, NDIS or TAC approved? YOU PAY NOTHING.
If your claim has been approved, we bill your funder directly. Zero out-of-pocket cost — no gap, no upfront payment, nothing.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is an evidence-based, depth-oriented approach that helps you understand how past experiences, relationships, and out-of-awareness patterns influence your present feelings, choices, and difficulties. It grew out of the psychoanalytic tradition but is more flexible, focused, and collaborative — and it is supported by strong modern research.
Rather than only managing symptoms, psychodynamic therapy looks at the deeper patterns beneath them: recurring relationship dynamics, emotional conflicts, and ways of coping that once made sense but now hold you back. Through an open, reflective conversation and a trusting therapeutic relationship, you gain insight into why you feel and act as you do — and the freedom to change it.
This family of approaches includes psychoanalytic, attachment-based, and object-relations therapies. What they share is an emphasis on self-understanding, emotional depth, and the relationship between you and your psychologist as a vehicle for change. Research shows the benefits of psychodynamic therapy often continue to grow after therapy has ended.
It works with the patterns and past relationships that shape the present, uses the therapeutic relationship itself as a source of insight, and aims for lasting change in how you relate to yourself and others — not only symptom relief.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy is especially helpful for long-standing, relational, or hard-to-shift difficulties:
Psychodynamic therapy is an open, exploratory conversation within a consistent, trusting relationship. Over time, your psychologist helps you to:
Talk openly about your thoughts, feelings, memories, and relationships, following what feels important rather than a fixed agenda.
Identify the emotional and relational themes that repeat across your life, including how they show up in the present.
Make links between present difficulties and earlier experiences and relationships, so they make sense rather than feel random.
Use this insight, and the therapeutic relationship itself, to loosen old patterns and relate to yourself and others in new ways.
Psychodynamic therapy can be shorter-term and focused, or longer-term for deeper change. Short-term psychodynamic therapy often runs across several months; your psychologist will discuss what best suits your goals.
We believe cost should never be a barrier to quality mental health care. There are several ways to fund your sessions at The Talk Shop:
Medicare Mental Health Care Plan — up to 10 rebated sessions per calendar year with a GP referral. Bulk billing may be available.
WorkCover & TAC — no out-of-pocket cost with an approved claim; we bill your funder directly.
NDIS — supported for plan-managed and self-managed participants.
Private Health & self-funded — extras may apply; affordable rates from $50, no referral needed.
Not sure what you are eligible for? Call 1300 224 665 and our team will help you work out your options before your first session.
We offer psychodynamic psychotherapy in-person at all four Melbourne clinics and via secure Telehealth Australia-wide:
They are related but not the same. Psychodynamic therapy grew out of psychoanalysis but is more flexible, focused, and collaborative — usually face to face, around once a week, without the couch or the years-long commitment often associated with classical psychoanalysis.
Yes. High-quality research, including a Cochrane review and several meta-analyses, shows psychodynamic therapy is effective for depression, anxiety, and other common difficulties, with outcomes comparable to other established therapies — and benefits that often keep growing after therapy ends.
No. Early experiences are explored because they shape present patterns, but the focus stays firmly on your current life, relationships, and what you want to change. Understanding the past is a means to living differently now.
It varies. Short-term psychodynamic therapy is focused and often runs across several months, while deeper or longstanding difficulties may benefit from longer-term work. Your psychologist reviews progress with you along the way.
Yes. Psychodynamic therapy works well over secure video, and many people find the reflective conversation translates comfortably to online sessions.
No referral is needed to book. A Mental Health Care Plan from your GP lets you access Medicare rebates for your sessions.
Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98–109. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018378
Abbass, A. A., Kisely, S. R., Town, J. M., Leichsenring, F., Driessen, E., De Maat, S., Gerber, A., Dekker, J., Rabung, S., Rusalovska, S., & Crowe, E. (2014). Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapies for common mental disorders. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (7), CD004687. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD004687.pub4
Steinert, C., Munder, T., Rabung, S., Hoyer, J., & Leichsenring, F. (2017). Psychodynamic therapy: As efficacious as other empirically supported treatments? A meta-analysis testing equivalence of outcomes. American Journal of Psychiatry, 174(10), 943–953. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2017.17010057
Our Melbourne psychologists offer evidence-based psychodynamic psychotherapy for lasting change. Book online or call — no referral needed to start.
