Knowing me, knowing you: A systematic review of object relations assessment.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(4), Oct 2023, 309-319; doi:10.1037/pap0000460Tools for assessing object relations (ORs) are fundamental for psychodynamic theory, research, and practice. ORs play an important role in diagnostic and therapeutic processes, helping therapists to better understand and manage complex relational functioning in their patients. The clinical relevance of OR is also recognized by the first criterion of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition Alternative Model for Personality Disorders. Our goal is to provide clinicians and researchers with an updated review of the a...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 11, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of Emotional communication and therapeutic change: Understanding psychotherapy through multiple code theory.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(3), Jul 2023, 227-228; doi:10.1037/pap0000463Reviews the book, Emotional Communication and Therapeutic Change: Understanding Psychotherapy through Multiple Code Theory by William F. Cornell and Wilma Bucci (see record 2021-06369-000). This volume gathers theoretical articles and chapters written between the publication of Bucci’s milestone monograph and 2018. They are grouped into five theoretical chapters, maybe more, addressing researchers and six chapters that interpret clinical practice in terms of dual code theory. By reading the chapters in sequence, within each of the two sections...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - May 8, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Assessing defense mechanisms in binge-eating disorder: Preliminary validity and reliability of the Defense Mechanism Rating Scale (DMRS) coded from Adult Attachment Interviews.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(4), Oct 2023, 279-287; doi:10.1037/pap0000457We assessed the reliability and validity of the Defense Mechanism Rating Scale (DMRS) when used with the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and compared defensive functioning among women with and without binge-eating disorder (BED). Participants were women with BED (n = 101), overweight/obese women without BED (n = 47), and normal weight women without BED (n = 49). Participants completed the AAI, and self-report measures of interpersonal distress, reflective functioning, and attachment insecurity. Coders rated the DMRS and reflective functioning f...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - April 27, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Rorschach assessment of ego involvement in affect regulation: Interrater reliability of form dominance in shading and achromatic color responses.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(4), Oct 2023, 328-337; doi:10.1037/pap0000458Although emphasis on psychodynamic thinking has waned in assessment training, the ascendant Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer et al., 2011) has reintegrated psychoanalytic concepts into empirical Rorschach assessment: R-PAS adds scores involving object relations, implicit dependency, aggressive ideation, and ego impairment. R-PAS has, however, excluded the psychodynamic framework for assessing ego involvement in the regulation of anxiety/dysphoria by eliminating the coding of Form Dominance in Shading and Achromatic Color (FD...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - April 13, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A multidimensional assessment of therapeutic outcomes: Toward a Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM-2)-oriented approach to psychotherapy research.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(2), Apr 2023, 128-133; doi:10.1037/pap0000455The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual–2nd edition (PDM-2) stresses the importance of putting the complex person back at the center of the diagnostic, therapeutic, and research process, fostering the integration between categorical and dimensional classifications, and emphasizing both individual variations and commonalities. Accordingly, the manual aims to promote a new impetus in the psychotherapy research field, trying to bridge the gap between empirical and clinical perspectives. In the present study, a sample of 12 patients diagnosed with bor...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - April 3, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Defense mechanisms as predictors of anxiety and self-esteem—A multiple regression analysis.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(4), Oct 2023, 348-353; doi:10.1037/pap0000459Defense mechanisms are supposed to help us deal with stress by decreasing anxiety and preserving our self-esteem. The aim of the present study was to determine which defense styles and specific defense mechanisms have the strongest association with anxiety and self-esteem. Defense Style Questionnaire–40 (DSQ-40), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and Spielberger State–Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered in nonclinical young adults (N = 341). The structure coefficients and Johnson’s relative weights were calculated. Mature, neurotic, and i...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - March 30, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(2), Apr 2023, 143-145; doi:10.1037/pap0000449Reviews the book, Illusion, Disillusion, and Irony in Psychoanalysis by Peter Wolson (2020). This is a fascinating, provocative, sophisticated book in which the author explores the importance of the title’s seminal psychodynamic concepts in human psychology, development, and clinical work. In contrast to focusing on case material, although he sporadically includes samples of his previously published cases, Steiner illustrates the human and clinical relevance of these concepts in classical literature. The reviewer found that Wolson's literary i...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 16, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Preliminary findings on the associations between defense mechanisms and implicit versus explicit negative affect.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(4), Oct 2023, 270-278; doi:10.1037/pap0000451Since the initial conceptualization of defense mechanisms by Freud (1923), it is assumed that defense mechanisms are mental operations that serve to keep unpleasant affects out of awareness. Empirical evidence on how defense mechanisms varying in terms of their adaptiveness relate to implicit versus explicit negative affect, however, is missing. In the present study, we aimed to fill this gap and investigated how participants’ habitual use of defense mechanisms was related to both explicit and implicit negative affect. We analyzed data from a ...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 9, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of Traveling through Time: How Trauma Plays Itself Out in Families, Organizations and Society.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(2), Apr 2023, 141-142; doi:10.1037/pap0000447Reviews the book, Traveling through Time: How Trauma Plays Itself Out in Families, Organizations and Society by M. Gerard Fromm (2022). In this book, The types of psychoanalytic material examined by Fromm are therefore quite diverse, and he shifts comfortably between the different approaches that are necessary for understanding such different materials. For McCandless and Erikson, Fromm is doing literary/historical analysis of their own writings as well as biographies, where of course no confirmation by the subjects are possible. Fromm’s discu...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 9, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Review of Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Research Evidence and Conceptual Critiques.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(1), Jan 2023, 61-73; doi:10.1037/pap0000435Reviews the book, Core Concepts in Classical Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Research Evidence and Conceptual Critiques by Morris N. Eagle (2017). In this review, the author describes some of Eagle’s perspicacious analyses of classical psychoanalytic concepts, but because the author thinks certain aspects of the Oedipus complex as more salvageable than Eagle does and because the author seems to have arrived at a surprisingly Lacanian view, given his many reservations about Lacan’s theories, of das Ich, one that regards das Ich as an inherently unsta...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 6, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The contributions—An overview and integration of the special issue in honor of Sheldon Bach.
This article reviews the contributions of each of the authors in this Special Issue. We look at the relationship of the concepts that are developed to the work of Dr. Sheldon Bach. Most of the articles illuminate some aspect of Bach’s interest in the early development and treatment of narcissistic issues and personality traits. There is also an attempt to integrate Bach’s contributions and distill his implicit theory of personality development and psychoanalytic treatment. The article ends with a discussion of S. Ellman’s contributions that build on and extend the work of Sheldon Bach. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 6, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The power of exclusion (an ode to Sheldon Bach and Sandor Ferenczi).
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(1), Jan 2023, 43-49; doi:10.1037/pap0000431Psychoanalytic politics is explored starting with Freud’s death in 1939 and the politics of exclusion. The author looks at American psychoanalysis during the 70s and 80s to see what changes were taking place in technique and why the Freudians didn’t embrace Ferenczi’s work. When Ferenczi’s work did became available in the 80s, Relational and Interpersonal schools quickly took him as their forefather. The author tries to show why the psychology of small narcissistic differences, led Freudians to keep excluding him. Using Bach, Stone, Loewal...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 6, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The monsters in-between.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(1), Jan 2023, 38-42; doi:10.1037/pap0000448Sheldon Bach was interested in monsters as “the exotic inhabitants of that mental territory that stretches between the self and the other, between the past and the future, between the known and the unknown.” (Language of Perversion pp. 136–137) He was primarily interested in the maternal relationship as the breeding ground of monsters, but briefly pointed to the importance of the paternal relationship as well. By looking at clinical material and the life of J.R.R. Tolkien, I will develop Bach’s thoughts about monsters in two directions. Fi...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 6, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Mothers, daughters, and hatred: The void in the mirror.
This article addresses the question of early maternal emotional absence, maternal hatred and its impact on the relationship between mothers and daughters. I will focus on adult female patients who grew up with mothers whose personalities were organized around a psychotic core—often subtle and hidden—and who mirrored a sense of self shrouded by emotional absence and hatred whenever their daughters could not intuitively meet their needs. These mothers desperately need to merge and be magically rescued and relieved from their own unbearable pain, fears, and misery. I integrate Andre Green’s concepts of the dead mother a...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 6, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A child is being murdered: A contemporary psychoanalytic treatment of a compulsion to child pornography.
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 40(1), Jan 2023, 25-30; doi:10.1037/pap0000430I will describe the treatment of a man who was afflicted with a compulsion to child pornography. I will outline the course of the treatment from the initial manifestations of early nonsymbolized trauma in the register of enactment to the growth of understanding, reflection, and healing. Leaning on Sheldon Bach’s work, in particular, his article, “A Dream of the Maquis de Sade,” I will describe how the patient was compelled to perverse attempts to repeat in an attempt to mourn the devastations and confusions of his early years and the erasure...
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - February 6, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
