Neuropsychoanalytic Diagnosis ( Part 5 )

These unpleasant feelings ( in your case grief/depression)  which  result from faulty, unconscious, repressed, childhood predictions (ego compromises/solutions) that failed to adequately resolve your  childhood conflicts/trauma,  require defenses to ward off these bad  feelings.                                              

Your neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis includes assessing the three levels of defenses that are utilized in the three levels of disorders:  Neurotic defenses, narcissistic/borderline defenses,  and psychotic defenses. The higher level neurotic defenses are more likely to succeed in defending against the unpleasant feelings than are the  narcissistic/borderline ones. And the narcissistic/borderline defenses are more successful at defending against bad feelings than are the psychotic ones.

When any level of these defenses fail, you experience the "return of the repressed" in the form of the troubled  feelings returning to consciousness. It was likely such troublesome feelings that brought you to treatment. These feelings/symptoms are grouped together in the various descriptive  diagnoses of  the DSM, including your major depression diagnosis. 

But since these unpleasant feelings/symptoms are the result of unmet basic emotional needs/drives (id), which result from the faulty, unconscious, repressed, childhood predictions ( ego) mentioned above, it is the assessment  of these faulty predictions  that is the key difference in neuropsychoanalytic diagnosis and DSM diagnosis. The reason being is that these  faulty  predictions  are why you  cannot successfully  meet  your basic emotional needs/drives. And the  inability to meet your  basic emotional needs/drives  is what is causing your suffering/psychopathology/mental illness.    

So, assessing your unconscious, repressed, faulty prediction that is failing to meet your basic emotional need, and thus resulting  in your unpleasant feeling that is not sufficiently defended against, goes beyond DSM descriptive diagnosis of your feeling/symptom to its underlying cause.                                    

Neuropsychoanalysis believes that the faulty prediction is the underlying problem. It is the cause of your  mental illness. Once it is properly diagnosed, you can proceed in treatment to change it to a workable prediction. This neuropsychoanalytic treatment will lead to your cure.