Psychodynamic psychotherapy and counselling: what contribution can it make to the treatment of addiction?

This paper gives a brief description of the psychodynamic approach to understanding addictions. It makes reference to the recent review of drugs services in the UK and the recent NHS review of psychotherapy, and it provides a rationale for increasing the use of the psychodynamic perspective in drugs services within a framework created by these two reports. It briefly outlines the evidence of the effectiveness of these approaches and describes the criteria to use for patient selection. It provides information on counsellor and therapist registration, and highlights the need for training in giving skills to deal with such difficult problems.