On mirroring in group psychotherapy

“A woman has two images. There is a magical person seen or remembered by those who love her, her finest qualities are flesh and spirit illuminated. She herself knows this ideal self; she projects it, if she is confident; or she daydreams her ideal self; or she recognizes it with gratitude in the admiring eye of others. There is at the same time a second image; the woman as seen by those who dislike or fear her. This cruel picture has an all too powerful mirror in her own negative idea of herself. She sees with fear her own ravaging impulses and most painful of all, a graceless, freakish, and unlovable physical self, this was the mirror her parents held before Edith. Her brothers saw her with love. She herself knew both images. Her life, and her poetry, constituted a flight from the second one.”     

The Atonement of the Alleged Perpetrator's Daughter: Understanding of Model Scenes and Space Attachment in Analytical Dance Therapy

In this rich paper the analysand Annabelle is sent by her analyst to the dance therapist who reports in great detail how Annabelle manages to throw off and—to a certain extent—integrate not only her own life-long misunderstanding but also those of her parents. The reason for Annabelle's referral was straightforward: the analysis had ground to a halt. Words no longer reached her. The reader is reminded of the emotive-relational-motor clusters described in Chazan's and Shahar-Levy's papers. Body image distortions and space misperceptions curtailed this patient's ability to function. When she began to bring her distress to her analytic dance therapy sessions, she could not associate verbally but made use of props her therapist had in store. As she slowly progressed toward true symbolization and expression, her therapist found herself embroiled countertransferentially. The patient's long-suffering mother was remembered as someone who would, or could, only give partial information about the family's history. The father had been a Nazi and was now blamed for all the suffering the family had lo endure. This fact resonated both with Annabelle's analyst and the dance therapist who managed to take a long look at their own family's records during that troubled time.     

Coming Out in Voices

This paper articulates the personal experiences of a woman with a physical disability who enters therapy to explore issues involving lesbian identity, health and illness, disability oppression and pride, and relationships. Written in the first person, the article uses anecdotes, poetry, and journal entries to chart the author's process of self-discovery. As a woman, a lesbian, and a person with a disability, the author frequently finds herself at odds with the culture around her. This creates conflicts between the author's real self, and the self she must present to others. She discusses how she had learned to "silence the voices" which were not useful in challenging the stereotypes, making others comfortable, or communicating with assistants. The author describes how therapy offered her the opportunity to unlearn the silence, value all of her voices, listen to herself, resolve her internal dilemmas, and develop a deeper sense of self.     

By name or by deed? Identifying the source of the feminist stigma

Prejudice and discrimination against feminists were explored across two contexts, a workplace and a social setting. We examined university students' reactions to a woman who called herself a feminist, behaved like a feminist by challenging sexism, did both, or did neither. In Study 1, participants (N = 177) evaluated a job candidate less favorably when she called herself a feminist after controlling for perceived assertiveness and participants' feminist self‐identification. However, our results showed no evidence of hiring discrimination. In Study 2, participants (N = 184) evaluated a peer less favorably and were less willing to befriend and date her when she called herself a feminist, controlling for perceived assertiveness. Participants were also less willing to befriend her when she behaved like a feminist. The contextual nature of the feminist stigma and the influence of perceived assertiveness are discussed.     

Dreaming of spiders: Abuse,economics, and theological insecurity in pastoral counseling

... This hope in no hope is clearly demonstrated in the following dream of a young adult woman who had been severely hurt emotionally in her relationships in her family of origin and again in her failing marriage. In this dream, which was presented in a group and dealt with mainly by my co-therapist, the woman placed herself in a glass room like a shower, with the handle to the room's only door on the outside. There was a crack in the glass of one of the room's corners, and through this crack came some spiders. She was lying on the floor and the spiders began to crawl over her. Though she screamed for help, no one would come to open the door. As one approach (among many) to the interpretation of this dream my colleague utilized the manipulation of the dream symbols to ask her to imagine that the spiders had changed into kittens. She resisted this suggestion intensely, saying that she could not allow such an imaginary change. Besides, the spiders weren't too bad to endure, for if she changed the spiders into kittens and the kittens turned out to be evil, then she would be at her rope's end. She preferred to live with her perspective that the world is hostile rather than risk the possibility of another hope being shattered. (Jordan, 1986, pp. 98–99)     

Internal state of emergency – working with an international student suffering from trauma in a student counselling service

In this paper I look at the suicidal state of mind of an international student who comes from a country at war and has been traumatized by a violent event. The student is tortured by an internal dilemma surrounding unbearable feelings of guilt and shame that arise when she leaves her home country to study abroad. Her dilemma or survivor guilt triggers an internal contract with herself, whereby she is internally persecuted when she makes an attachment to the university and her course. I suggest that an individual in this state of mind, suffering from post-traumatic stress, has regressed to a primary state of unintegration where the self is at the mercy of psychotic anxieties and the student is at risk of suicide. It is suggested that a safety net made up of the student services and the wider health service can provide a symbolic or mental space and containment for the student's state of mind until she can function as a student.     

The Descent of Shame1

Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission—to appease relevant social others—also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become.     

Mentally ill or mentally handicapped? A longitudinal study of severe learning disorder

SUMMARY

In the course of some eighteen months of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, a young woman of twenty-seven once deemed braindamaged at the age of seven years, has shown herself capable of sustaining once weekly psychotherapy. Against all expectations she has taken responsibility for her own attendance, travelling by public transport alone to her sessions. She has also taken initiatives in relation to finding work for herself.

Psychotherapy has disclosed a significant component of autism in the personality which is resorted to regularly and which seems to drag the patient into a passive acceptance of half-life which she tries not to mind. In the course of her sessions the patient has come to take more notice of her predicament and to mind more about the dissatisfactions which she experiences.

The case presented here is considered to have the characteristics of a particular group of adolescents. These are often described as “just slow” and are brought for psychiatric or psychological attention by desperate parents urgently concerned about the working future of their children.

These are individuals of whom the original definition of mental handicap contained in the Mental Health Act 1913 “a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind” would seem to offer as honest, appropriate and meaningful an assessment as the formal I.Q. score introduced in 1959. Unlike the latter, it is an assessment based on a concept of mental development. Assessment by I.Q. score has led to emphasis on training to compensate for the supposed loss of functioning and also to notions like “training for development” and “education from birth”.

In the case described here it was the abandonment of training aims and approaches which produced a dramatic improvement in the well-being of the patient and her family. Treatment is now fostering the potential in this woman to bring her own mind into action and to support in her, her own wish for personal development.     

Married Women's Name Styles and Interest in Continuing Education

This study uncovers a relationship between the way a married woman chooses to style her name and the extent to which she expresses interest in continuing education. The woman who chooses an independent name style is more likely to express interest in further training. She may differ in self-image from the woman who identifies herself by a dependent name style. Counselors who seek to help women through mid-career transitions may come to see name style as an important indicator of women's attitudes and one which may, in turn, affect others' attitudes toward them.     

Simone Weil’s Passion Mysticism: The Paradox of Chronic Pain and the Transformation of the Cross

Simone Weil’s theology is deeply connected to her experiences with chronic pain. Pain is paradoxical in that it is an essentially private phenomenon yet it simultaneously demands to be shared with another. Weil’s life and thought exemplify both aspects of this paradox, demonstrating how her pain alienated her from her own body and from others, and how her thought found full expression as she attempted to share experiences with pain. Weil’s experience of pain was transformed in her passion mysticism, the deep connection she felt with the crucified Christ. In this connection, the most unbearable aspect of her pain, the threat, which it presented to her very self through annihilation, was absorbed into the cross and transformed by God’s love. While this did not necessarily diminish Weil’s pain, the meaning it had for her as a person was transformed through an encounter with Christ crucified, in which she experienced God’s suffering along with her.     

Dancing Contact Improvisation with Luce Irigaray: Intra‐Action and Elemental Passions

This article takes as its point of departure Luce Irigaray's Elemental Passions, in which a woman‐speaker tries to make her lover and the discipline of philosophy understand that she is not how they have imagined her to be; that she is not at all but that she keeps becoming through perpetual movement. The article investigates Irigaray's investment in a form of materialist difference feminism that offers conceptual links to the posthumanist work of Karen Barad's agential realism, especially her theorization of intra‐action. The link between Irigaray and Barad is established via a diffractive reading that incorporates the dance/movement research practice of Contact Improvisation. Although expressed through written language, Elemental Passions creates the impression of the woman‐speaker dancing, of encountering herself, her environment, and her lover through moved and moving contact, searching for a practice of moving‐together, feeling‐with, and feeling‐between that can be experienced in an improvised dance duet. Exploring how touch and the sharing of weight in Contact Improvisation challenges boundaries and establishes ever‐changing configurations and entanglements between dancers, the article proposes that Irigaray's woman‐speaker envisions herself as a posthuman/ist woman and that improvised dancing offers a practice of intra‐action through which she can encounter the world in her becoming.     

Infant psychiatry clinic grand rounds. Unresolved grief: A two-year-old brings her mother for treatment

Rebecca was a 2 ¹/₂ -year-old Caucasian female who was brought to the Infant Psychiatry Clinic by her 28-year-old widowed mother. Her mother's chief concern was around parenting issues as well as how to explain to Rebecca the death of her father. This loss occurred when Rebecca was 6 months old and was a source of great pain and unresolved grief to her mother. Central to this case was the chaotic history of Rebecca's mother, who was a victim of incest from the time she was 13 until she was 23 years old. Both of her parents struggled with chronic alcoholism during much of her childhood. It appeared that a factor precipitating the mother's request for help was her struggle to move out of her own mother's home. This outpatient Infant Clinic case involved two primary goals: (1) the assessment of the parent-child relationship and (2) the development of confidence in this “good enough” mother. Vitally important to the process of treatment was the mother's modulation of timing and frequency of sessions. The issue of pacing was carefully monitored as this mother could have been overwhelmed by delving precipitously into her incestuous history. The use of a structured videotape interview to address mother-child interaction and parenting issues was particularly helpful. Referral to an AlAnon group provided the mother with social support as she separated herself from her alcoholic mother and moved toward autonomy in her own parenting role.     

Drugs and Human Behavior (Book)

Theorists have suggested that menstrual complaints occur more frequently in women who have a weaker sense of feminine identification. To test this hypothesis 50 women were administered the Body Symptom Questionnaire and the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI). The DMI scales have been linked to differences m sexual identification. Results affirmed a relationship between personality dynamics and the degree of menstrual discomfort experienced by women relative to their other body problems. As predicted, the higher the percentage of menstrual symptoms, the more likely it was that a woman made use of "masculine mode" externalizing defenses and the less apt she was to use "feminine mode" non-externalizing defenses. A composite index of the tendency to externalize hostility when faced with conflict was highly correlated with the percentage of menstrual complaints. The defense pattern findings suggest that a woman who has a strong acceptance of herself as a female will experience fewer of her somatic symptoms as menstrual.     

Menstrual discomfort, psychological defenses, and feminine identification

Theorists have suggested that menstrual complaints occur more frequently in women who have a weaker sense of feminine identification. To test this hypothesis 50 women were administered the Body Symptom Questionnaire and the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI). The DMI scales have been linked to differences in sexual identification. Results affirmed a relationship between personality dynamics and the degree of menstrual discomfort experienced by women relative to their other body problems. As predicted, the higher the percentage of menstrual symptoms, the more likely it was that a woman made use of "masculine mode" externalizing defenses and the less apt she was to use "feminine mode" non-externalizing defenses. A composite index of the tendency to externalize hostility when faced with conflict was highly correlated with the percentage of menstrual complaints. The defense pattern findings suggest that a woman who has a strong acceptance of herself as a female will experience fewer of her somatic symptoms as menstrual.     

Who,What, When,Where, How,and Mostly Why?

SUMMARY

The death of a client by suicide was very emotionally destabilizing to this therapist. She worked hard to distance herself personally from the pain at first and at the same time she found herself overfocused on the “psychological autopsy.” She had difficulty accepting new clients and wanted to withdraw from a meaningful appointment to a state advisory committee. Only when she was able to identify with the client's pain and realize how that pain touched her own history of loss was she able to grieve productively. She realized that gender was relevant in her identification with the victim and in sorting out each of their histories of loss.     

Female ego ideal conflicts in adulthood

A woman's early development, including the unique mother-daughter bonding, the development of her body image, her castration and annihilation fears, and the interaction with her father, causes specific conflicts when she comes to make choices about motherhood and career. She struggles with disrupting and changing the early mother-daughter bond, with her belief that she should be able to accomplish what she expects of herself without help, with her priorities of relatedness to others as she deals with a larger number of people. She struggles with assertion and anger in her self-interest and with ego ideal expectations that demand she have infinite patience and caring for others.     

Gone to the Spirits: A Transgender Prophet on the Columbia Plateau

This article examines the life of Kaúxuma núpika, an indigenous transgender prophet living on the Columbia Plateau in the early nineteenth century. As a Ktunaxa woman, she crossed cultural boundaries to marry a Euroamerican. When she left her husband, insisting on her independence and autonomy, she crossed another frontier. When Kaúxuma núpika declared herself no longer a woman, but a man, and secured himself a wife, he crossed further boundaries of gender and sexuality. As a warrior and a prophet, Kaúxuma núpika crossed the boundaries to the world of the spirit, returning with warnings, guidance, and hope for the tribal people of the Columbia River valley. In this project, I reflect upon the historical record in light of indigenous prophet traditions on the Columbia Plateau and current scholarship on gender and power among Native communities of the region, to consider notions of power, identity, and the religio-cultural dynamics of gender and sexual identity among indigenous communities on the Columbia Plateau.     

Gray Matters: A Deployed Physician’s Perspective on Combat Medicine in Iraq

A female physician who was serving as a first-year medicine resident in Manhattan in September 2001 writes this paper. It details her experience of signing up for military service as a result of the September 11th attack on the United States. She lays out the surroundings, atmosphere, and reactions of those around her during the attack and details her own personal motivations for joining the military, her need to take control and help those in need heal while also trying to heal herself. Grateful, yet haunted by her experience, she provides an intimate glimpse into her time serving as a combat physician at a trauma hospital in Balad, Iraq during the 2007 military surge. A trained geriatrician and palliative care physician she recounts the stories of several patients that have forever shaped her life and explores the contradictions and ethical challenges she faced while caring for them ultimately struggling with the uncertainty of whether what she was truly doing was good for those she served or herself.     

Mother and child. A psychobiographical portrait of Mary Cassatt

The noted American impressionist, Mary Cassatt is remembered for her intimate portrayal of women, children, and the mother-child relationship. In this paper I have attempted to highlight some of the psychological forces impinging upon the artist, feeling that the artist's work is highly overdetermined. Mention was made of some of the difficulties that a psychobiographical study engenders. Nevertheless, it is hoped that such a study leads to enhanced understanding and appreciation of the artist, her work, and her rich inner world. An examination of the artist's life indicates that difficulties in the family of origin impinged upon her and deeply influenced her work. The loss of several siblings during critical developmental subphases may have produced intense survival guilt in Mary, motivating her to "recreate" her siblings on canvas and to devote her life to care of survivors. Lack of confirmation of Mary's talents by her father may have hindered her development, propelling the child toward a profoundly libidinalized and enmeshed relationship with the mother. Mary's intense relationship with her mother may have led the artist to develop particular stylistic nuances in her productions, contributed to her inability to become a wife and mother herself, and led to frequent episodes of depression. A case was made that Mary suffered from narcissistic disturbance, never completing the recognition of herself as a person outside of the orbit of her mother. Finally, the role of Edgar Degas in the artist's life was described. He seems to have played a major role in the evolution of Mary's style as well as being an important influence in her making a partial separation from her mother in adulthood. In spite of Mary's deep personal suffering, she was able to epitomize in her paintings the most tender and nurturant of relationships. By painting the mother-child theme, she sublimated her own wishes to become a mother as creator of art. Within her family system, she appropriated the position of mother; as the artist, she became the interpreter of this experience. By developing her talent, she communicated her wish to be a mother, and expressed the need to find, if only on canvas, a more truly empathic mother. In essence, her work allowed her to conceive of a life different from the one external reality imposed upon her. It also served as an indispensable adaptive function, allowing the artist to communicate with others, achieve recognition, and play.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

Hypocritical Blame,Fairness, and Standing

This paper argues that hypocritical blame renders blame inappropriate. Someone should not express her blame if she is guilty of the same thing for which she is blaming others, in the absence of an admission of fault. In failing to blame herself for the same violations of norms she condemns in another, the hypocrite evinces important moral faults, which undermine her right to blame. The hypocrite refuses or culpably fails to admit her own mistakes, while at the same time demands that others admit theirs. The paper argues that this lack of reciprocity—expecting others to take morality seriously by apologizing for their faults, without one doing the same in return—is what makes hypocritical blame unfair.