Transference-Love and Institutional Involvement in a Case of Psychotherapy Supervision

Transference-love in supervision remains a relatively unexplored subject in psychotherapy. This article describes and analyzes an incident of the supervision of a student whose dress code raised a question regarding the existence of transference-love. The role of the institution in maintaining a protective envelope is shown to be significant in the satisfactory resolution of what appeared to have been an impasse. In addition, multicultural and gender issues are examined to illustrate the complexity of the subject.     

Linking cheating in school and corruption

Introduction

Previous research suggests a link between academic cheating and corruption. However, no prior empirical studies examined this link with cross-cultural data.

Lamotrigine in psychiatry: pharmacology and therapeutics

Following the introduction of lamotrigine in 1994 as a treatment for epilepsy in the United States, the drug has seen progressively greater application in psychiatry, particularly as a treatment for bipolar disorder. This review critically evaluates the support for lamotrigine use across a broad range of psychiatric disorders as well as discuss its pharmacology, side-effect profile, and interactions with other medications.     

Fragments of a Case of Psychosis: From Institutional Sheltering to Psychoanalytical Experience

This article describes a psychoanalytical experience that took place in an institution for mental health, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There, an art workshop was created in an attempt to welcome and shelter psychotic patients. This work space later proportioned a ''setting'' for the practice of psychoanalysis with psychotic patients. In the clinical case, herein examined, the author dedicates special attention to the relation that exists between certain psychotic aspects and the process described by Jacques Lacan as: the ''foreclosure of the name of the father''.     

Drug corruption in undercover agents: Measuring the risk

Drug corruption is more likely among law enforcement officers who use undercover investigative methods. Current views of police corruption attribute drug corruption either to flaws in character or to the corrupting criminal environment where investigations are carried out. This article presents a pragmatic approach to the interaction between personality and situational causes, and findings from an assessment of a large group of undercover agents. Greater drug/alcohol abuse and disciplinary problems were linked to amount of undercover work. For the majority of agents, the risk for drug corruption was related to either poor impulse control, Neuroticism, or a desire to experiment with new experiences. Agents assessed as having a Disciplined Self-Image presented a lower risk for drug corruption while also showing risk taking and motivational qualities required for successful undercover performances. Certain personality traits of interest may only manifest themselves as disciplined or undisciplined conduct when given the opportunity by an instigating environment.     

Genetically-determined abnormal behavior in dogs: Some implications for psychiatry

This paper discusses the neglect of behavioral genetics by psychiatry; summarizes experiments on a stable and an unstable strain of the pointer dog (reported in detail in a companion article); and points up the value of the obtained results for models of mental illness. The importance of genetically-determined extreme variations in temperament in shaping the individual's responses to particular environments is emphasized. These variations occur spontaneously among animals, and probably are relatively favored for procreation among civilized man and domesticated animals. Various dimensions of temperament and of inborn perceptual, cognitive, and integrational deficiencies are placed alongside early experience and later-life stresses, as equally important in contributing to mental breakdowns.     

Selective unilateral autonomic activation: implications for psychiatry

Research advances have led to three methods for selectively activating one half of the autonomic nervous system in humans. The first method is an ancient yogic technique called unilateral forced nostril breathing (UFNB) that employs forced breathing through only one nostril while closing off the other. The second method works by stimulation of an autonomic reflex point on the fifth intercostal space near the axilla. The most recent method employs unilateral vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) via the mid-inferior cervical branch and requires surgical implantation of a wire and pacemaker. UFNB is non-invasive and seems to selectively activate the ipsilateral branch of the sympathetic nervous system with a possible compensation effect leading to contralateral VNS. UFNB and VNS have been employed to treat psychiatric disorders. While UFNB has been studied for its potential effects on the endogenous ultradian rhythms of the autonomic and central nervous system, and their tightly coupled correlates, VNS has yet to be studied in this regard. This article reviews these three methods and discusses their similarities, putative mechanisms, their studied effects on the endogenous autonomic nervous system and central nervous system rhythms, and their implications for the treatment of psychiatric disorders.     

Brain imaging: Applications in psychiatry

For more than a century psychiatrists have suspected neuropathology in patients with mental illness. In the last decade there have been developed several technologies that are capable of looking at both neuroanatomy and neurophysiology in the brains of living humans. First, x-ray computerized axial tomography led the way in visualizing the living brain, and now magnetic resonance imaging allows brain structure to be shown with even more clarity. Brain electrical activity mapping allows computerized maps of electrophysiological activity to be visualized in a way never before possible. Nuclear medicine has provided the means of looking at various metabolic and neurochemical parameters in the living brain. These include regional cerebral blood flow studies using xenon¹³³, single photon emission tomography, and positron emission tomography. Psychiatrists are cautiously optimistic that these various brain imaging technologies will be important new tools in continued exploration of the causes of mental illness and ultimately may lead to more effective treatments.     

Nature,corruption, and freedom: Stoic ethics in Kant's Religion

Kant's account of “the radical evil in human nature” in the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone is typically interpreted as a reworking of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. But Kant does not talk about Augustine explicitly there, and if he is rehabilitating the doctrine of original sin, the result is not obviously Augustinian. Instead, Kant talks about Stoic ethics in a pair of passages on either end of his account of radical evil and leaves other clues that his argument is a reworking of an old Stoic problem. “Radical evil” refers to the idea that our moral condition is—by default and yet by our own deed—bad or corrupt; and that this corruption is the root (radix) of human badness in all its variety, ubiquity, and sheer ordinariness. Kant takes as his premise a version of the Stoic idea that nature gives us “uncorrupted starting points” (Diogenes Laertius 7.89). What sense can be made of the origin of human badness, given such a premise? Kant's account of radical evil is an answer to this old Stoic problem, which requires a conception of freedom that is not available in his Stoic sources.     

Humanisation and education: Issues for school reform

The humanisation of education is one of the three leitmotifs in a recent Soviet planning document A Conception of General Education. It is suggested that Western education systems also need to be humanised, although not so radically as the Soviet, by the removal of obstacles to educating pupils as members of a liberal democratic society. A future joint research agenda between East and West should concentrate on (a) improving mutual understanding of this goal, (b) clarifying conceptual obstacles, and (c) reflecting on means of realising it. Specific proposals are put forward under all three headings.Invited paper presented at International Conference on Philosophy of Education organised by U.S.S.R. Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, Gagra, Georgia, October 12–22, 1990.     

Medical psychotherapy consultation: psychoanalytic psychiatry for the patient and professional

An NHS Mental Health Trust Medical Psychotherapy Consultation Service using psychoanalytic psychiatry to help the patient and professional is described. The Consultation Service established in 2000 is offered to secondary acute and community mental health teams and primary care. The service was evaluated as a basis for regional and national development. Between 2006 and 2013, 87 consultations from 210 were sampled to ascertain demographic and diagnostic profiles and outcomes of the consultation process. We conducted an online survey of local consultant psychiatrists’ views about the service, and undertook a thematic analysis of the free text comments. We also conducted a survey of members of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Medical Psychotherapy Faculty to ascertain whether similar consultation services existed elsewhere in the UK and had been evaluated. The Leeds model of psychoanalytic consultation – a ‘consultation sandwich’ – is described. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the work of consultation is seen as an extension of the dynamic field of the analytic situation. This paper develops the concept of a bastion – an omnipotent reserve in and between the patient and professional derived from adhesive identifications leading to stuck relationships. The adhesive identification in the patient and professional acts like a ‘grievance glue’ – a mutual manifestation in a last bastion of painful limitations not faced, losses not grieved.     

Relationship between collectivism and corruption in American and Chinese books: A historical perspective

Previous research on the relationship between collectivism and corruption has not investigated their co‐variation over time. In this study, we use Google Ngram Viewer to track the frequency of words related to collectivism and corruption in American books (1800–2000) and in Chinese Books (1970–2008). The results demonstrate that a positive association between the usage of these terms during the periods in both Chinese and American books, with changes in words related to collectivism preceding changes in words related to corruption in American books. The theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.