Conflict of interest policies in science and medical journals: Editorial practices and author disclosures

This study examines the extent to which scientific and biomedical journals have adopted conflict of interest (COI) policies for authors, and whether the adoption and content of such policies leads to the publishing of authors’ financial interest disclosure statements by such journals. In particular, it reports the results of a survey of journal editors about their practices regarding COI disclosures. About 16 percent of 1396 highly ranked scientific and biomedical journals had COI policies in effect during 1997. Less than 1 percent of the articles published during that year in the journals with COI policies contained any disclosures of author personal financial interests while nearly 66 percent of the journals had zero disclosures of author personal financial interests. Nearly three fourths of journal editors surveyed usually publish author disclosure statements suggesting that low rates of personal financial disclosures are either a result of low rates of author financial interest in the subject matter of their publications or poor compliance by authors to the journals’ COI policies.     

Taylor and Parfit on personal identity: a response to Lötter

In this paper the author attempts to show that Lötter is not justified in ignoring orthodox views of personal identity on the basis of arguments offered by Taylor. It is argued that Taylor's arguments against the orthodoxy do not establish what he, and Lötter, hope they establish, namely, that the orthodox position, represented by the work of Parfit, fails to account for personal identity. The author also attempts to show the importance of this area of debate between orthodox theories of personal identity and the concept of personal identity offered by Taylor, Lötter, and others.     

A Sandtray a Day Keeps the Doctor at Play: Using Sandtray for Personal and Professional Development

This article details a year-long project in which the author created a series of 365 sandtrays and journaled about them as a professional and personal growth project. The author shares professional and personal lessons learned from this experience and describes how reflective practices can be used as a method to improve clinical work.     

Pastoral psychotherapy and the symbolic

The author points out and illustrates the interrelatedness of the capacity to think symbolically and a sense of self. Through a case study he describes the disclosure of hidden and unresolved personal concerns by symbolic references and the correspondence between personal myth and emotional concerns. A perspective of therapy is suggested—that it is a process of clarifying and demythologizing self-perceptions, conscious and unconscious, so that a person can move on to other representations of self and be liberated from restrictions imposed by undisclosed myths. Finally, the author examines what is pastoral or religious about a psychotherapeutic process and offers questions for further study.     

The psychotherapist's own psychotherapy: educating and developing psychologists

In this article, the author synthesizes 25 years of his research on the personal therapy of mental health professionals. The author summarizes the high prevalence of personal treatment, its use by seasoned practitioners, its personal and professional goals, its typically positive outcomes, and its lasting lessons concerning the practice of psychotherapy. Particular attention is devoted to the therapist's selection of a personal therapist and the conduct of treatment with patients who are themselves psychotherapists in comparison with patients who are laypersons. The cumulative results indicate that personal therapy is an emotionally vital, interpersonally dense, and professionally formative experience that should be central to the development of health care psychologists.     

Racism's Impact on Counselors' Professional and Personal Lives: A Response to the Personal Narratives on Racism

The author identifies common themes among the personal narratives pertaining to racism (Journal of Counseling & Development, 77[1], 1999) and discusses implications of some themes for counselors' professional and personal development.     

Reflections on a wounded and bleeding temenos

COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and financial and political turmoil have uprooted our sense of personal and collective safety and predictability. Analysts are faced with professional and personal challenges, as well as a charge to help make sense of this new normal. This reflective piece focuses on the author’s thoughts on a wounded and bleeding temenos. She grapples with the new reality of analysis carried out via technology (e.g. Zoom or telehealth). The article interweaves personal experiences with theoretical and professional reflections on two Jewish myths that relate to creating temenos or sacred space in the face of ancient disasters. Specifically, she discusses Choni HaMagel, a first-century BCE Jewish scholar and miracle-maker who prays for relief from a drought from inside a sacred circle. She also tells the tale of four Chassidic Rebbes who face crisis from a sacred space in the forest. The author frames this piece with two personal and numinous dreams dreamt during the pandemic; one offering scenes of destruction and one offering hope for a future transformation.     

Hope

Summary

The author describes her treatment of her first alcoholic client and observes how the process of providing hope to this client heightened the author's personal capacity to hope. Hope as an aspect of healing is considered and personal reflections on psychotherapeutic work with alcoholics are discussed.     

Personal relationships in late modernity

This article is concerned with the significance of personal relationships in contemporary social life, principally drawing on recent British research. After reviewing traditional sociological theories concerning the impact of economic transformations on family and community ties, the author examines the character of couple and family commitment in the context of the radical demographic changes that have been occurring, particularly in patterns of family formation and dissolution. Relating these changes to theories of “late modernity,” the author assesses their implications for the relevance of personal relationships in general, and friendship in particular, in contemporary social formations. The author's argument is that far from becoming socially marginal as dominant theories generally imply, personal relationships are likely to become increasingly significant as social life becomes more fragmented and less predictable.     

Making Sense of It All: Hermeneutics and Family Therapy

In this personal narrative, the author presents his journey as a beginning therapist. He focuses on the changes that have taken place in his personal and therapeutic worldview as a result of conceptualizing therapy as a hermeneutic process. Three constructs essential to hermeneutics are discussed. The author illustrates how each construct is used in the interpretation of a biblical text and then discusses how the same construct is applied to therapy. Finally, he offers his ideas to stimulate conversation to further clarify his own thinking about therapy.     

Infant observation: A range of questions and challenges for contemporary psychoanalysis1

The author attempts to integrate several perspectives within the field of infant observation that reflect the analyst's personal experience as a clinician, as a professor at the analytic institute and as a researcher in the field of psychoanalysis. Can infant observation contribute to analytic technique, theory and training? If so, what would be the nature of such contribution? To answer these questions, the author reviews the literature on infant observation from Freud to the present, highlighting Latin American contributions to this subject. She makes reference to the role of technological innovations, which have allowed videotaping, repeated observations, temporal segmentation and computerized programs, thus giving rise to microanalytic research. This discussion prompts the question about the contributions made by systematic research to clinical practice. To tackle this question, the author presents both a clinical vignette taken from her personal experience, and the current debate on this subject as it appears in the work of Daniel Stern and André Green. Finally, she presents some conclusions that are part of an ongoing debate in the psychoanalytic field.     

Drops of Light into the Darkness: Migration,Immigration, and Human Rights

This essay is structured like a mosaic with a sequential passage from piece to piece. The author begins with observations on the documentary film 4.1 Miles about refugees smuggled across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to the island of Lesbos in Greece. A discussion about migrant dislocation and dispossession follows along with the implications of the “other.” What about the other? This leads to explorations in human rights and psychoanalysis and how the personal became political for the author.     

Narcissism and the personal myth

Kris (1956) described the concept of the personal myth as an autobiographical story built around a family romance fantasy seen specifically in obsessive characters and serving a defensive function. In this paper the concept of the personal myth was expanded to include similar defensive constellations originating from within the grandiose self, built around omnipotent and omniscient fantasies and occurring in character formations with pregenital, narcissistic pathology. The case of a known author and poet, Nikos Kazantzakis, was used to illustrate the thesis of the paper. The available biographical material and the work of the author offer evidence to support the claim that the author's personal myth was a protective shield against anxiety originating in early narcissistic traumata.     

Political and clinical developments in analytical psychology, 1972‐2014: subjectivity,equality and diversity—inside and outside the consulting room

Utilizing Jung's idea of theory as a ‘personal confession’, the author charts his own development as a theorist, establishing links between his personal history and his ideas. Such links include his relationship with both parents, his sexuality, his cultural heritage, and his fascination with Tricksters and with Hermes. There follows a substantial critical interrogation of what the author discerns as the two main lines of clinical theorizing in contemporary analytical psychotherapy: interpretation of transference‐countertransference, and the relational approach. His conclusion is that neither is superior to the other and neither is in fact adequate as a basis for clinical work. The focus then shifts to explore a range of political and social aspects of the clinical project of analytical psychology: economic inequality, diversity within the professional field, and Jung's controversial ideas about Jews and Africans. The author calls for an apology from the ‘Jungian community’ for remarks about Africans analogous to the apology already issued for remarks about Jews. The paper is dedicated to the author's friend Fred Plaut (1913‐2009).     

The presence of sexuality as Cantus Firmus with Variations

This text is a distillate of many years of activity as a psychoanalyst. The author gives personal reflections on sexuality as it appears in transference and countertransference, in theory and clinically. The phenomena are viewed from the perspective of metaphor, as the author uses, e.g., the music of Franz Schubert as a metaphor for Eros and Thanatos; concepts she sees are metaphors in themselves. The phenomena of ?wild analysis” and guilt are also commented upon.     

A Constructivist Pedagogue's Personal Narrative of Integrating Faith with Learning: Epistemological and Pedagogical Challenges

This article offers a personal narrative about integrating the Christian faith into the process of teaching and learning. The author begins by describing his understanding of pedagogy that framed his beliefs about teaching in higher-education environments. Understanding the author's beliefs provides a context for his experiences in integrating faith with learning. Specifically, the author offers three tensions of faith integration and describes how pedagogy helped him overcome these tensions.     

Transition and transience: Winnicott on leaving and dying

The author offers reminiscences and reflections on Donald Winnicott during the last phase of his life and considers the personal and theoretical importance for him of the topic of death. The author goes on to examine similarities and differences between Winnicott's concepts of coming into being and ceasing to be.