Countertransference issues in psychotherapy with lesbian and gay clients

This article briefly reviews literature on responses towards same-sex (lesbian and gay) sexualities from psychoanalytic and ‘lesbian and gay affirmative’ psychotherapeutic perspectives. An analysis is presented of reports of countertransferential reactions to lesbian and gay clients, obtained from interviews with fourteen psychotherapists who work in a lesbian and gay affirmative manner and eighteen clients who had received affirmative psychotherapy. Data were subjected to grounded analysis. Participants consistently attended to the thoughts, feelings and values that therapists held in relation to lesbian and gay clients and how these affected the meanings and practices available to them. These were linked with the therapist's sexual identity among other factors. Negative countertransferential reactions were regarded as potentially occurring among heterosexual and lesbian and gay therapists and were seen as arising from therapists’ conscious and unconscious fears about same-sex sexualities. These findings indicate a need to continue debating these issues more widely in the professional arena.     

Dimensions of belief about miraculous healing

Although social scientists have convincingly demonstrated relationships between religious beliefs/practices and mental health, almost none of the empirical findings or related theory apply specifically to Jews. To address this limitation, we investigated the role of Jewish religiousness in anxiety, depression, and happiness, in a large Jewish community sample (n = 565). Several facets of global Jewish religiousness were examined, as well as a theoretically based Jewish religious variable, trust in God. A self-report measure of trust in God was created, and factor analyses yielded two reliable and valid subscales: trust in God and mistrust in God. Contrary to our hypotheses, global Jewish religiousness was on the whole unrelated to mental-health functioning. As expected, higher levels of trust in God were associated with less anxiety and depression, and greater personal happiness, whereas inverse associations emerged for the unanticipated but robust mistrust subscale.     

Being religious implies being different in humour: evidence from self- and peer-ratings

Previous research indicated negative associations between religiosity and humour creation and appreciation. The present studies on 175 students (study 1) and 196 adults from married couples (study 2) investigated the links between religiosity and spirituality and the use of specific humour styles (assessed on the basis of Martin et al. (2003 Martin, RA, Puhlik-Doris, P, Larsen, G, Gray, J and Weir, K. 2003. Individual differences in uses of humor and their relation to psychological well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality, 37: 48–75. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) Humor Styles Questionnaire and Craik et al. (1996 Craik KH Lampert MD Nelson AJ 1996 Sense of humor and styles of everyday humorous conduct In W. Ruch (Ed.), Measurement approaches to the sense of humor (special issue) Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 9 273 302 [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) Humorous Behavior Q-Sort Deck). In study 1 (self-reports), men's spirituality and religiosity were found to be negatively related respectively to the use of hostile and social humour. In study 2 (self- and/or spouse-ratings), there was weak but meaningful evidence that both religious men and women did not tend to use hostile and earthy humour nor, to some extent, social humour. Religious men tended to use self-defeating humour, a finding partially due to their high insecurity in attachment. Moreover, religiosity and/or spirituality was found to be related to between-spouse similarity in many humour styles. The discussion points out the willingness of religious people to share similar values and ways of enjoyment with their partners as well as the fact that the ‘discomfort’ of religion with humour seems to encompass a large number of humour styles.     

The Implicit Domain in Couples and Couple Therapy

At this point in the evolution of our field, developments in psychoanalysis and family systems, as well as findings from cognitive neuroscience and research in infant development are pointing to convergences in our understanding of the human experience. One central point of convergence has been the understanding of implicit modes of experience, particularly as this relates to affective communication. Through the lens of couples and couple therapy, this paper examines the ways in which the patterning of couple and family relationships takes place in the enactive domain through nonconscious, implicit communication processes. With the understanding that it is in the nature of implicit experience that it must be enacted to be accessed, this paper argues that some of that which is stored in the implicit domain remains embedded and enacted in one's most intimate relationships and therefore can only be accessed within the context of those relationships. This paper then explores some of the implications of implicit processes as this relates to the triad of the therapist and the couple in couple therapy.     

Imaginary bodies and worlds

In this paper I distil a concept of the imaginary with which to make good the claim that our mode of embodied subjectivity is an imaginary embodiment in an imaginary world. The concept of the imaginary employed is not one in which imaginary worlds are contrasted with the real, but one in which imagination is a condition of there being a real for us. The images and forms in terms of which our imagined bodies and worlds are constituted carry, in an interdependent way, cognition and affects. Imagined configurations have a resilience which makes their displacement more than a matter of appealing to considerations of truth or falsity. It involves encounters with alternative imagined configurations which can be recognized as making both cognitive and affective sense.     

Thick Ethical Concepts in the Philosophy and Literature of Iris Murdoch

Although thick ethical concepts have been neglected in Murdochian scholarship, this article argues that they were central to the thought of Iris Murdoch. In the first section, the article provides a sustained account of thick ethical concepts in Murdoch's philosophy, demonstrating how these concepts align with and illuminate familiar aspects of her philosophical essays. The first section also explores the ways in which Murdoch's alternative account of moral concepts was at the heart of her overall attack on the noncognitivism of her day. In the second section, the article provides a reading of The Black Prince and considers the ways that thick ethical concepts offer new insight into Murdoch's literary activity. It concludes by suggesting that studying Murdoch's philosophy and literature in light of thick ethical concepts reveals a deep unity between her two intellectual projects.     

Dealing with Object Loss

The nature and outcome of working through an object loss depend on the proportions in which the lost relationship involved developmentally earlier (prestructural) and more advanced (poststructural), aspects. The two groups of elements are dealt with by entirely different methods, which are presented and discussed in this paper. For this purpose, some aspects of internalization are discussed and distinguishing a new form of internalization is proposed. The additional loss of objects following a major one are also briefly discussed.     

Psychoanalyse und Traumatherapie

The author is of the opinion that for patients with combined traumas of commitment and violence a psychoanalytical long-term treatment which takes into consideration the peculiarities of this group of patients will continue to be the therapy of choice. Special ??trauma therapies?? may be useful after acute traumas and in cases in which external conditions exclude psychoanalytical treatment. Depending on the situation of the individual case, though, specific modifications of the technique may be necessary, which possibly include proven specific trauma therapeutic techniques as parameters. Based on the parallelism of the economic aspect of the trauma and the aspect of object relationship, a decisive role in the therapeutic process befits the recognition of the traumatic reality and the working out of traumatic transference, which, however, must not traumatize under any circumstances. This is accompanied by the restitution of a good interior object, which only becomes possible within a frame giving security and support. The establishment and preservation of this frame may also be due to especially required parameters derived from trauma therapies, the psychodynamic significance of which must be analyzed with the individual patient. The author's approach is clarified by two case vignettes in which the theoretical reflections have led to very different technical procedures. The author comes to the conclusion that the psychoanalytical trauma therapy shows how therapeutic concepts aiming at an optimum result must still be tailored to the individual case.