Benefits of Psychoanalysis Support Therapy on a Cognitive Dysfunction Process: A Systematic Review and a Meta-Analysis

Abstract

This case study depicts a 66-year-old retired man with bipolar disorder, exhibiting the loss of cognitive functions (specially working memory), in a cognitive dysfunction process. Upon the medical exams and Neuropsychological evaluation results, an intervention programme was created, based on exercises of perception, attention, memory, language, among others, to help the patient to preserve the remaining cognitive functions. However, the analyst learned with the patient, picked up his cues and changed the intervention method. After seven months of psychoanalysis support therapy, with the free association method, the patient felt recognized, and showed results from the impact of his emotions’ resonance inside the analyst in the “here and now” experience. Gradually he moved from the schizo-paranoid position into the depressive one, reinforcing different parts of the self in his identity process. At the same time, he improved his executive functions showing an organized and planning thought and, above all, he realised the way he wanted to be remembered which helped him to build better relationships and to find more significance in the forgetting experience.