A Pursuit Device for Obtaining both Quantitative and Qualitative Records

Fifth and sixth grade students (N = 87) were divided into High Test Anxious and Low Test Anxious groups on the basis of galvanic skin responses (GSR). Ss identified as High Anxious responded positively to group systematic desensitization procedures, exhibiting significantly (p < .05) lower autonomic indices of test anxiety and significantly (p < .001) improved criterion test scores. Low Anxious Ss exposed to the systematic desensitization program demonstrated no significant change in criterion test scores.     

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.     

Twenty-First Annual AGPA Conference January 23–25, 1964 Barbizon-Plaza Hotel

The experience of being in individual and group psychotherapy concurrently with different therapists is discussed. A semi-structured interview protocol was used to explore a variety of dimensions of “conjoint” treatment. The potential benefits and difficulties associated with receiving different perspectives about the same issues are delineated. The necessity of working with the inevitable comparisons of therapists and treatments is underscored. A number of aspects of the transference phenomena that emerge are discussed, including “splitting,” which is construed as a process that may be destructive, but that may also be valuable if handled well. Countertransference dangers are explored, as is the question of whether, and under what circumstances, communication between the treating therapists is necessary or desirable.     

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.     

?Symbolisierung�� als intersubjektive und intrapsychische Dynamik

Igor A. Caruso (1914?C1981), one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1962, began to discuss questions of the interplay of biological, social and evolutional realities and intrapsychic development in the early 1950s with the early Vienna Circle of Depth Psychology. Caruso understood that the specific human ability to transcend the overdetermined biological constitution into a development of consciousness, care and self-awareness is basic for the need and lifelong activity of intersubjective relationship. Sexual and survival drives as the biological basis contain their own transformation as cultural potency within the subject-object relationship. Each act of relationship to things and living objects creates a new reality which is a meaningful symbol for both parts of the relationship in their own individual reality. This new, third, reality gains full effectiveness for both actors as ??symbolic realism?? and initiates the ongoing development. In this understanding psychic development is a process of changing interactive creation and effectiveness, following biological drive dynamics as well as its inherent future transformations by attachment. Symbolization is therefore the main intrapsychic and intersubjective activity of development of object-awareness and self-awareness. Caruso emphasized the meaning of symbol and symbolization as an act of relationship to and within the world and consequently understood psychoanalytical theories as well as a changing symbolization of relationship.     

Soziales Netzwerk Psyche

In six steps I attempt to show how modernized psychoanalysis contributes to a ??social theory of mind?? (Mitchell, pp.?17?f.). First of all, the pluralism of schools is reflecting the lack of a psychoanalytic core theory, a shortcoming which is merely concealed by its conceptional oversupply and can only be overcome by scientific research. Secondly, I suggest to give up the inclination towards deep thinking, typical of our profession always on the lookout for new metaphors of the psyche, and to replace this inclination by the precise observation of interactions. Thirdly, I discuss the suggestion to understand the unconscious as a hidden link between self and the real world, as a relational tendency of the psyche to connect??a legacy of symbiotic experience??the inside with the outside not only in dreams but in reality. This is, fourthly, my understanding of the unconscious drive of human mind to express itself in a social world whose interactive platforms only allow that building of mental structures we call mentalization, according to Fonagy. Fifthly I point out that the monadic theory of mind implicated in classical drive theory is obsolete in a scientific sense in order to plead, sixthly, for a modernization of psychoanalysis replacing its central metaphor of the mental apparatus by that of a mental network: The modernized psyche is nowadays less in charge of managing intrapsychic drive-economy; its main duty in the age of modern reflexivity seems to be the skilful management of self-relation in the broadly stretched network of interpersonal relationships.     

Die DPG-Praxis-Studie

All psychotherapeutic methods must be scientifically evaluated. Empirical evaluation of evidence is a prerequisite for acceptance as scientific psychotherapy as well as for payment by health insurance. Currently the psychotherapy methods accepted within the German health system (behavioural therapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and analytic psychotherapy) are reviewed by a governmental evaluation committee concerning evidence, necessity and cost-effectiveness. The DPG practice study has basically two aims: 1) to conduct a large naturalistic study to investigate effectiveness, sustainability and economic aspects of psychodynamic and analytic psychotherapy and 2) to offer a framework for psychoanalytic institutes, members, candidates or groups to realize own research ideas by collecting additional data within the study. The present article describes the background, main research questions, structure and design of the DPG practice study with regard to the evaluation questions.