Review of What happens when the analyst dies: Unexpected terminations in psychoanalysis.
Reviews the book, What Happens When the Analyst Dies: Unexpected Terminations in Psychoanalysis edited by Claudia Heilbrunn (2020). Heilbrunn’s edited book is divided into two main parts: the voices of patients and voices of practitioners. “Part 1, Patients,” is devoted to first-hand accounts of each author as a patient, a rare voice in our field, digesting the death of their current analyst. In “Part 2, Practitioners,” the chapters are written by subsequent analysts, analysts who were seriously ill while treating patients, analysts who have occupied both positions of mourner and ill practitioner, and analysts wh...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - April 9, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Recognizing the role of defensive processes in empirical assessment of shame.
The empirical assessment of shame rests on self-report measures of shame- and guilt-proneness. One important limitation has been ignored—self-report measures do not assess unacknowledged or hidden shame, whether it is overt and undifferentiated or bypassed. It is assumed that low scores on shame subscales signify low shame (-proneness). However, among individuals who score low, some are really low in shame (those with genuine low shame) and some defensively deny it (and struggle with shame). Measure scores alone cannot distinguish between them and should not be taken at face value. Possible consequences of ignoring hidde...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - April 9, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Infant research and adult treatment revisited: Cocreating self- and interactive regulation.
We consider the relevance for adult treatment of an empirical evaluation of a dyadic systems view of mother–infant face-to-face communication which examined self- and interactive contingency processes in relation to one another, using a time-series approach. Self-and interactive contingency define procedural expectancies. The mother–infant findings indicated that an individual’s self-contingency is influenced by the way the individual coordinates with the partner, and vice versa. Thus, self-and interactive processes were coconstituted. Moreover, self-processes organized interactions to a far greater extent than inter...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - April 9, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Personalizing psychotherapy for personality disorders: Perspectives from control-mastery theory.
While several empirically supported models for treating personality disorder (PD) are available, researchers and clinicians have continued to advocate for the personalization of psychotherapy to the particular needs and characteristics of the individual patient with severe personality pathology. Control-Mastery Theory (CMT; Gazzillo, 2016; Silberschatz, 2005; Weiss, 1993; Weiss, Sampson, & The Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group, 1986) provides a useful framework for understanding personality pathology, and for guiding treatment with individualized case formulation. The present article introduces the basic concepts of ...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - March 23, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
From Jackson Pollock to psychic blades: Climbing the semiotic ladder in working with children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Psychodynamic psychotherapy has not been considered to be the treatment of choice for children with an attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis. In fact, as Gilmore (2000) and Salomonsson (2004) have pointed out, psychoanalysts are reluctant to accept children with such symptom presentation for treatment. Over the past 15 years, however, a number of articles have offered a better understanding of the subjective states of children with ADHD and provided evidence that psychoanalytic- and psychodynamic-based interventions can be effective in reducing many of the symptoms children with ADHD display while also ...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - March 19, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of Creative repetition and intersubjectivity: Contemporary Freudian explorations of trauma, memory, and clinical process.
Reviews the book, Creative Repetition and Intersubjectivity: Contemporary Freudian Explorations of Trauma, Memory, and Clinical Process by Bruce E. Reis (2019). Reis tackles the most burning issues of contemporary psychoanalytic theory with originality and courage. Originality because he seeks his own solutions, and courage because he shows that he is by no means afraid of zombies. A number of such figures circulate in psychoanalysis, disguised as sterile respect for tradition, superficial ecumenism, intellectual laziness, hypocritical dogmatism, corporate defense, and so forth. By successfully fighting against these undea...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - March 19, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Levels of relatedness and self-definition in young adults: Associations with psychopathology and interpersonal functioning.
This study examined linear and potential categorical relationships of DRS with demographic features and with indices of intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning (i.e., depressive and dissociative symptoms, dependent and self-critical personality features, and warmth, conflict, and depth of intimate relationships), in a nonclinical sample of young adults (N = 333). It also investigated the unidimensionality of the DRS in the relationships between the level of self-representation (DR-S) and representation of the mother (DR-M) and father (DR-F), and the relationship of DR-S with disruptions in the balance between different...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - March 19, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of Creativity and the erotic dimensions of the analytic field.
Reviews the book, Creativity and the Erotic Dimensions of the Analytic Field by Dianne Elise (2019). This is a timely and important book. Elise’s thesis posits sexuality as a central factor in psychoanalysis. Its disappearance has been gradual. Her writing is in reply to those who have downgraded sexuality. There is much in this book that successfully argues for the inclusion of the concepts of sexuality and gender in our clinical endeavors. There are clinical gems in many chapters that can be enormously helpful theoretically and clinically. Elise provides the multisided aspect of problematic issues between patients and ...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - January 16, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Attachment and the Oedipus complex: Attachment orientations moderate the effects of priming Oedipal representations on the construal of romantic relationships.
In this article, we attempt to extend into the realm of romantic relationships recent findings (Biton-Bereby, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2019) concerning the effects of dispositional attachment anxiety and experimental reactivation of Oedipal issues on adult men’s sexual attraction to women. In 3 studies, we measured male participants’ attachment orientations, subliminally primed Oedipal or neutral mental representations, and examined the effects of the primes on mating preferences, romantic jealousy, and the appeal of physical sex within a romantic relationship. Findings indicated that men who scored higher on attachment a...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - January 13, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Deep listening: Explorations on the musical edge of therapeutic dialogue.
This paper describes an attempt to heighten the ability to broaden attention to encompass procedural interactions, rhythmic patterning, moments of meeting, or of fittedness as seen from the musical edge of therapeutic dialogue. A possibility of applying deep listening, a concept and practice developed by Pauline Oliveros, an American composer, is suggested as a potentially useful technique of improving sensitivity to a nonverbal register of communication. The idea of improving sensitivity to nonverbal register in a therapeutic relationship is referred to the work of infant researchers and authors who introduced conclusions...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - December 16, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of flirting with death: Psychoanalysts consider mortality.
Reviews the book, Flirting With Death: Psychoanalysts Consider Mortality edited by Corinne Masur (2018). In this book, Masur has put together a collection of essays by psychoanalysts exploring the difficult and often-eschewed subject of death. With the many voices flirting with death, Masur’s poignant collection of essays offers a community within which one can reflect on the intense isolating feelings that confronting mortality does stir in the analyst. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - December 5, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Narcissistic states of privilege.
This paper attempts to conceptualize the subjectivity of privilege and its impact upon states of consciousness. A psychoanalytic understanding of privilege is constructed by capturing how alterations and limitations in awareness are utilized to sustain a sense of narcissistic wholeness. Paradoxically, this lived system of being renders the individual incomplete, unaware of certain dissociated aspects of identity as well as compromised in their range and depth of subjective experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - November 7, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Through flow and swirls: Modifying implicit relational knowledge and disconfirming pathogenic beliefs within the therapeutic process.
The aim of this paper is to describe and discuss the models of the process of change in psychotherapy developed by the Boston Change Process Study Group (2010), and by the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group (Gazzillo, 2016; Silberschatz, 2005; Weiss, 1993; Weiss, Sampson, & the Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group, 1986). The first model is centered on change in implicit relational knowledge and describes the process of change as being composed of “moving along” phases interspersed by “now moments” that can become “moments of meeting” if the clinician is able to give authentic and specifically fitted...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - November 4, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The adaptive function of fantasy: A proposal from the perspective of control-mastery theory.
The aim of this paper is to show the evolution of the psychoanalytic conception of fantasy/phantasy from a psychic activity aimed at denying reality and/or fulfilling frustrated wishes to a tool useful for adapting to reality. We will then review some recent findings of empirical research on imagination and mental simulation showing how these activities, and mind wandering in general, is expression of the constant effort of the psyche to set and pursue adaptive goals, to elaborate and test plans, and to master and solve problems and traumas. Finally, we will show how these empirical data are consistent with the conception ...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - October 7, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Symbolic meaning of drugs in psychotherapy: A psychodynamic perspective.
Compared with the huge number of research on psychotropic drugs (PDs), and their wide use made to manage the symptoms of psychological and psychiatric disorders, little attention has been devoted in providing a psychodynamic interpretation of their symbolic meanings during psychotherapy. Our theoretical contribution, based on a critical overview of 5 decades of literature, focuses on the psychodynamic meaning attributed to PDs, and examines how their role in transference–countertransference exchanges depends on patients’ personalities and psychological traits, considering recent acquisitions also in the study of the pl...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - August 22, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
