Psychoanalytic psychotherapy and student counselling

This paper explores the experience of a psychotherapist working in a university counselling service, indicating the contribution I think a psychoanalytic orientation can make to this kind of work. The exposed ‘coal face’ nature of the work is illustrated, and some of the psychotherapeutic implications of working within a large organisation discussed. There is an exploration of institutional dynamics which bear directly upon the psychotherapist, in terms of what it is possible to provide, and of professional self-preservation and self-esteem. Analysis of the uses made of the counselling service is seen as a contribution towards enabling the service to represent properly itself and its concerns within the institution.     

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy with inner city patients

The purpose of this paper is to discuss issues pertaining to the use of psychoanalytic understanding and technique, including the utilization of parameters with inner city patients. Traditionally, inner city patients were not seen as appropriate candidates for psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy or psychoanalysis.     

Psychoanalytic developmental psychology and the supervision of psychotherapy supervisor trainees

While literature on psychotherapy supervision abounds, literature on supervisor supervision (i.e., the actual supervision of a supervisor trainee who is in the process of learning to supervise) is far more scarce. How might the supervision of supervision process be best understood? What is the developmental experience of supervisor trainees? How can supervisors effectively intervene when working with supervisor trainees? Those questions have been addressed in only the most meagre fashion, and guidance on how to engage in the supervision of supervision is sorely lacking. In this paper, a psychoanalytic developmental framework is used to provide a means of conceptualising the supervisor trainee experience and to suggest a programme by which supervisors can best respond to their supervisor trainees' needs. Supervisor trainee ‘unfolding’ and ‘becoming’ are captured within a developmental progression that punctuates separation and individuation processes. The place of the supervisor – in holding and containing, loosening and liberating, buffering and bolstering, and refuelling and reloading – is considered in the facilitation of supervisor trainee development.     

The fear of the body in psychotherapy

This paper identifies the fear of attending to and engaging with the patient's body and the therapist's body, regardless of therapeutic orientation, as a topic rarely explored in books and articles but pervasively experienced because of the cultural norms brought to the consulting room. It explores how we might name the constituent parts of this fear and describes how they inter-link. A case study then exemplifies learning about and transforming such fear in both patient and therapist. Finally, the paper offers suggestions of how therapists might increase their awareness and turn this fear into a tool which extends their range of skills.     

Fertility attitudes and the fear of death

An attempt to test empirically the general proposition that fear of death is related to certain attitudes about fertility, particularly expected number of children. Analysis of data collected from 355 undergraduates at a midwestern U.S. university showed this proposition to be generally supported and dependent, in part, on respondents' sex. Those who are more fearful of death tend to perceive procreation as a means for others to reduce fear of death, and also tend to expect having a greater number of children than those whose fear is less. Although the interrelationships of the variables appears somewhat complex, they provide an empirical reference for further research linking mortality to fertility.     

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy in paediatric liaison: a diagnostic and therapeutic tool

Paediatric liaison work requires an appreciation of the interweaving of the different factors involved when a child has physical symptoms. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy is usually viewed simply as a potential treatment option. This paper argues that its use is both therapeutic and diagnostic and that it should be valued for this breadth of contribution. The therapeutic process is conducted in a way that can promote an understanding of the child and their context and thus enhance the ability 9 to meet the child's needs by all involved in their care. This can be achieved without sacrificing the degree of privacy that the psychotherapist/patient relationship requires. Material is presented from the psychotherapy of a child who had an hereditary condition which moved unexpectedly into a terminal 2 phase after psychotherapy was started. Examples are given to illustrate the importance of the understanding gained from therapy and how, through an integrative process, it was used to assist the overall 4 care. The material also describes the potential diagnostic use of information from psychotherapy when this is formulated by consideration of conscious and unconscious mechanisms alongside mental state phenomenology. This has implications for the relationships between disciplines and for their training requirements.     

Absolutely fatal The fear of death and the mid-life crisis

Abstract

The term ‘mid-life crisis’ is one of those conveniently plastic psychological labels that manages to encapsulate within its neat frame of reference a remarkably diverse range of emotional states and behaviours. Criteria for inclusion in this particular category of suffering are, of course, age-based - although the definition of what time-span constitutes ‘mid-life’ is, itself, an area which enjoys a certain plasticity. The advantage of this, no doubt, is that having one ‘tag’ to describe such a wide sweep of scenarios simplifies the task of classification (or, to quote Freud in another context, 'saves us all the difficulties of differentiating' (Freud 1914: 547)); while the drawback of such diffusion is that it renders the goal of precise analysis that much more elusive - to expert and layman alike.     

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy and its supervision via videoconference: experience,questions and dilemmas*

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - The patient lives in Berlin, the therapist in Lisbon and the supervisor in Budapest. Not long ago, continuous psychotherapy and supervision would have been...