Tribute to Ellen Noonan

This story was written after the conclusion of a period of therapy with a patient who had experienced severe childhood trauma. It was one of those occasions when it didn't feel right to even enquire about the possibility of publishing a paper on the basis of our work together. The priority was to avoid any intervention that might constitute an intrusion into an individual who had already been too much intruded upon. Having come to that conclusion, I found myself writing this short story. The events described are entirely different from those described by my patient. However, the story captures part of the emotional truth of the patient's situation and state of mind and, in this sense, constitutes a reworking of the material that emerged in therapy.     

Jane Ellen Harrison's contribution to the study of religion

Sandra J. Peacock, Jane Ellen Harrison: The Mask and the Self, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1988.     

Jane Ellen Harrison: Another life

Josef Franz Thiel Albert Doutreloux Heil und Macht, Approches du Sacré Vol. 22 1975 Studia Institut Anthropos

Haralds Biezais Religious Symbols and their functions 1979 Almqvist and Wiksell International Stockholm     

Discussion of Helmut Hinz's case

The author comments on this case report from a relational and intersubjective perspective. He emphasizes the here-and-now, interactive attunement and the emergence and development of the patient's nascent healthy core, more than the interpretation of defense. A case report of clinical material selected and condensed by someone else necessarily lacks many of the subtle, non-verbal clues and shared treatment memory that the author would rely on for his perspective. Thus he approaches this report as a written narrative of manifest interaction and gives his impressions of how he might have understood the material and responded somewhat differently. He concludes that, although he and the treating analyst would have different conceptions of how the pivotal moment emerged, the outcome might not have been very different. Finally, he challenges the common usage of 'homosexual' to denote a certain dynamic position in a context that has nothing to do with sexual desire.     

Commentary on Paper by Ellen F. Fries

In Perchance to Sleep: Minding the Unworded Body in Psychoanalysis, Ellen F. Fries masterfully articulates the complexities of right-brain to right-brain, body-to-body interactions between herself and her patient. Her work highlights the dominance of the nonverbal implicit self over the verbal, explicit self and provides an excellent example of clinical work in which she thoughtfully attends to the unspoken, bodily based communication that takes place within the therapeutic dyad. In this discussion, I offer perspectives from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy on the impact of early attachment on the procedural organization of action sequences that reflect and sustain the implicit self, and embody unconscious relational expectations. The following topics are addressed: (a) Physical actions that provide avenues of exploration into the implicit self, especially actions such as reaching out, making eye contact, or maintaining an upright posture that are abandoned or distorted when they are ineffective in eliciting the desired response from attachment figures; (b) Body-oriented interventions that target the involuntary physical spasms that Fries' patient experiences, which are associated with unresolved physiological arousal originally stimulated in the face of trauma; and (c) The nonverbal manifestation and negotiation of enactments that emerge from the body-to-body dialogue between the implicit selves of patient and therapist.     

Christian Nurture of Children in the Writings of Horace Bushnell and Ellen G. White

Until the 20th century, the spiritual nurture of children was not a high priority for the Christian church. In fact, for most of Christian history, reflection on the nature of children and their faith formation was often considered “beneath” the work of theologians. Two 19th-century American Christian writers, however, stand in sharp contrast to this trend: Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) and Ellen G. White (1827–1915 White, E. G. (1915). Life sketches of Ellen G. White. Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press. [Google Scholar]). This article examines, compares, and contrasts the thoughts of these two thinkers on Christian nurture within the context of their lives and theologies of human nature and salvation.