Inducing psychotherapy: Hypnotic analogue for brief psychotherapy

These authors contend that hypnosis is a useful analogue and change accelerator for brief psychotherapy.A deep structure of psychotherapy is described by Frank, as making changes in a person's assumptive world so he/she may live more effectively. Cognitive alterations arise from new emotional experiences or emotional schemas which in turn have arisen in the context of a therapy relationship.A parsimonious recipe for the structure of brief psychotherapy is hypnosis. Hypnotic analogues for psychotherapy emerge from many theoretical backgrounds. After integrating aspects of these theories, a general analogue of hypnosis for the structure of brief psychotherapy is suggested. The analogue addresses induction, power issues, deepening, making and solidifying cognitive alterations, and endings.     

The little puppet: working with autistic defences in mother-infant psychotherapy

This paper outlines a constellation around birth in our society that is related to advanced western medicine and the way that families move around the globe. It describes a brief therapy with a three-year-old child who was diagnosed as autistic, and a mother who resorted to 'heroic' defences against the anxiety of being unsupported in a strange country. The therapist undertook to process the catastrophic experiences of the birth as expressed in the child's play and transform the accompanying monstrous fantasies into human experiences and thoughts. By providing a maternal container for both mother and child, the therapist was able to dissolve the couple's negative enmeshment and help create a space in the mother's mind in which she could process her own feelings, and thereby process and understand the child's feelings and communications.     

Guiding Self-Change: A new model for brief psychotherapy

The authors summarize the essential ingredients of contemporary Brief Therapy (BT), the features that distinguish BT from longer-term therapies, and BT's core assumptions about personal change and influence. They then describe “Guided Self-Change” (GSC), an explicitly value-driven approach to personal change based on modern principles of adult education. GSC places primary responsibility for change with the patient as early as practicable. Inherent in this approach is an emphasis on efficient, limited utilization of counseling sessions to mentor patients' real life attitude and behavior experiments. Advantages of a highly proactive, value-driven educational orientation over the traditional therapeutic paradigm are enumerated, especially given current pressures for therapeutic efficiency.     

Use of dialectical psychotherapy in treating bulimarexic disorders: A case study

A variety of therapeutic approaches have been used in the treatment of anorexia nervosa and bulimia with varying degrees of success. This paper describes the treatment of a bulimarexic patient by co-therapists, using a dialectical approach.Appreciation is extended to Betty Hoffman for her editorial assistance.     

Formal paraphasias: A single case study

A case study is reported of an aphasic patient, RB, who showed frequent form-related whole-word substitutions in oral naming, writing to dictation, and reading aloud. In both written language tasks, the abstractness of the targets influenced the number of formal errors. In oral naming, a high proportion of formal paraphasias was related to the intended words in both form and meaning. A comparison between targets and formal paraphasias indicated a high agreement both in word class, number of syllables, stress pattern, and in basic (stressed) vowels. The agreement in consonants (including word-initial consonants), however, was low. It is argued that RB's formal substitutions are not caused solely by errors of lexical selection but that semantic, lexical, and segmental factors contribute to the error outcome.     

Outcome evaluation in brief mother-infant psychotherapies: Report on 75 cases

The effects of brief mother–infant psychotherapies (maximum of 10 sessions) were examined in cases of functional and behavioral disturbances in children less than 30 months old. Seventy-five mother-infant dyads were assessed prior to treatment, at 1 week, and 6 months after therapy ended. The outcome measures were changes in the infant's symptoms, the behavioral interactions between mother and infant, and maternal representations. The effect of two forms of intervention—Psychodynamic Therapy and Interaction Guidance Therapy—were compared. Results indicated a significant symptom reduction; dyadic interactions became more harmonious (mothers became less intrusive and infants more cooperative). Maternal self-esteem grew significantly and negative affects decreased. Improvements lasted as least several months, with some positive improvement detected at the 6-month follow-up. No major difference in outcome was found between the effects of the two forms of intervention. Within the limitations of research in a clinical context, this study suggests that brief mother–infant psychotherapies are a cost-effective method of early intervention.     

The fractionation of arithmetical skills: A single case study

A single case study of a patient with a selective impairment of arithmetical calculation is reported. DRC became severely acalculic after sustaining a left parietal intra-cerebral haematoma. His numeracy skills were documented as fully as possible. It was found that his knowledge of the significance of individual numbers and his concept of quantity appeared to be intact, but simple addition, subtraction and multiplication were all performed laboriously and inaccurately and his performance was inconsistent from trial to trial. Further it was shown that it was his knowledge of arithmetical facts not his knowledge of arithmetical operations which was impaired. The findings are discussed in relation to models of arithmetical calculation and it is concluded that for DRC there was a deficit in accessing one category of verbal semantic knowledge systems, namely arithmetical facts.