The analyst's narrative function: Inventing a possibility

This article describes a psychic function common to analysts that was gradually revealed through clinical work with children. It is a psychic quality derived from function α, which involves analysts’ capacity for reverie – their narrative function. The author presents two clinical situations where this function developed in the analytic field in relation to patients’ difficulty in symbolizing. In the first case there was an early traumatic experience unavailable for representation. The analyst lent the patient her ability to represent and produced a narrative that made it possible to create a world of phantasies and transform nightmares into ‘dreamable’ dreams. In other words, she removed the quality of unbearable, irrepresentable reality that characterized those raw experiences encrypted in the psyche. In the second case the analyst's narrative function sought to connect with the isolation, the shell that housed a child suffering from an autistic disorder whose ability to represent had not been established. The analyst provided meaning for the patient's repetitive, stereotyped play, thus weaving the child's subjectivity and gradually introducing a notion of alterity. The author seeks to show how this function, in the thematic construction of the session, facilitated both the working‐through of a traumatic situation (with the ability to share representations) and the constitution of the psychic fabric.     

Putting down roots: the significance of technical adaptations in the therapeutic process with fostered and adopted children‡

Severely neglected and traumatised children have also suffered from a lack of the parental nurturing which is needed for ordinary emotional development to take place. Often their past experiences make them unable to utilise the nurturing that foster and adoptive families try to give them and they are delayed or stuck in their development. In therapy, when the early small signs of new emotional development start to emerge, they may be heralded by technical challenges to the therapist. Two examples are given in this paper, which are discussed in the context of Stern et al.’s ideas about moments of meeting, Winnicott’s concepts about transitional phenomena and playing, and Hurry and her colleagues’ thoughts about the therapist as a developmental object. It is argued that it is important for the therapist to be alert to the possible significance of these technical adaptations in terms of the child’s capacity for new emotional development. These often indicate that a watershed in the treatment has been reached and if positively responded to, that the patient is in the process of ‘putting down roots’ in the ground of the therapeutic relationship and starting to grow across a spectrum of developmental pathways.     

A training outline for conducting psychotherapy process ratings: An example using therapist technique

Aims: This study addresses the effects of structured training on the development of coding skills used in psychotherapy process research. Method: Participants included graduate trainees enrolled in an APA approved Clinical PhD programme. A course outline for training is reviewed and examined in relation to ratings of therapist techniques used during psychotherapy sessions. Results: The effects of this structured training protocol for raters resulted in good to excellent levels of interrater reliability. Different groups of raters were compared along multiple factors such as level of graduate training, training received on a particular measure, and psychotherapy experience. Discussion: The implications of these findings for rater training in psychotherapy process research are discussed.     

对解释伪忽视机制的两种理论的初步检验

以视野因素对伪忽视的影响为切人点来考察注意的右半球优势理论与表征的空间变形理论对伪忽视机制的解释。使用灰度标尺任务和三视野速示迫选的实验方法研究视野和操作用手因素对伪忽视的影响。结果显示,只有将两种理论结合起来才能对伪忽视机制作出更好的解释。     

汉语双字词句知觉广度的眼动研究

阅读知觉广度通常指阅读者在阅读文本过程中每次注视能获取有用视觉信息的范围。既往的汉语知觉广度的研究一般把单字作为基本的知觉呈现单元,但在某些呈现条件下,此类呈现方式会导致阅读过程中的语义加工的完整性被破坏。本研究采用眼动追踪技术,使用移动窗口范式和中央凹掩蔽范式,使用双字词句作为阅读材料,双字词作为基本的知觉呈现单元,探讨在保证知觉呈现单元语义完整性的基础上大学生的汉语阅读知觉广度。实验一采用移动窗口范式,结果发现,知觉广度范围为注视词左侧1个双字词及右侧1-2个双字词的空间。实验二采用中央凹掩蔽范式,结果验证了实验一的研究结果。该结果表明,在汉语阅读过程中,以双字词为基本的视觉呈现单元,较既往研究中单字为基本呈现单元的情况,更好地保证了阅读中语义的完整性,从而获得了更大的知觉范围。该结果建立于视觉呈现单元的语义完整性的基础上,是对现有的汉语阅读知觉广度理论的完善和扩展。     

Spitting,kicking and stripping: technical difficulties encountered in the treatment of deprived children

The technical difficulties posed for the child psychotherapist working with children who have themselves experienced violence and abuse are addressed. A distinction is drawn between violence in the service of communicating about such experiences and violence that arises from more perverse aspects of the patient. The therapist's need to pay close attention to his counter-transference is emphasized. From an example of a single session we see the therapist's struggle to receive the communicative aspects of extreme acting-out behaviour at the same time as creating a safe setting in which thinking can take place.     

Light and movement: making contact with a traumatised and embattled latency girl

This paper shows a child psychotherapist learning and developing her technique as she attempts to make contact with a child who is extremely hard to reach. It is based on the first two years of three-times-weekly intensive psychotherapy of a latency girl who had little faith in a helpful therapeutic relationship. Her defences against such a relationship were entrenched and hard to shift. In this clinical work, the psychotherapist relies on close observation and her countertransference to develop a relationship with the child, in order to begin to make sense of her non-verbal emotional experience and communication.     

Remarks on aggression

This paper attempts to draw attention to the difference between the states of mind and inner worlds of neurotic, borderline and psychopathic patients, with reference to different types of destructiveness: anger in the neurotic patient; desperate vengeful hatred in the borderline paranoid; and a cold addiction to violence in the psychopath. Discussion focuses on technical issues and the need to meet the psychopathic patient where he really is, in the inner bleak emotional cemetery he may be inhabiting. Although most patients refuse to stay put in the neat schematic categories outlined, they do seem to appreciate and to need the therapist's recognition of the specific quality of these vastly different states of mind.     

Relational-oriented character analysis

Referring to the diversity of psychoanalysis of today, a position called relational-oriented character analysis is discussed. It is stated that relation and character as concepts refer to different and partly contradictory points of view in psychoanalysis, the first one emphasising mobile, dynamic aspects of personality, the second underlining stable, structural aspects. The principle aim of the article is to argue how the two perspectives can be theoretically combined in an overriding object-relational (two-person) conception and to discuss some implications for analytic technique. Finally, convergences and differences with other positions or schools in contemporary psychoanalysis are suggested.