The aim of psychoanalysis

The changing aims of psychoanalysis are discussed with reference to Money-Kyrle's paper on the subject. The theory of dammed-up libido, the theory of moral conflict and the theory of misrepresentations and perversion of reality which he described, all imply different aims. It is argued that, in addition, the theory of projective identification leads to a radical change in the aim of treatment which can now be formulated in terms of helping the patient regain lost parts of the self.     

“Hidden Treasures” from Israeli Women's Writing Groups: Exploring an Integrative,Feminist Therapy

This article presents the work of mental health practitioners and laywomen who have developed and applied a new model of working with women in groups, a model founded on feminist principles that uses women's writing as the vehicle for group work. The model maintains a delicate balance between the needs of the group, the needs of the women in their social environment, and the women's ability to be the broker of their time, place, and mode of expression. This article presents the theoretical roots of the model and the qualitative evaluation of the writing groups that have been held over seven years, and it discusses how and why this model works for women of all ages and from all walks of life.     

A controversy between Freud and Ferenczi and beyond

Abstract

With the aid of passages of Ferenczi's paper on elasticity, and of the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi, the author points out the conceptual difference between Freud and Ferenczi, evokes the historical roots of this difference, and highlights its continuing importance in present-day psychoanalysis.     

Checking the heavenly ‘bank account of karma’: cognitive metaphors for karma in Western perception and early Theravāda Buddhism

To visualize the accumulation of good and bad karma in terms of credit or debt in a bank account is a common feature in works on Buddhism and other Indian traditions. Applying conceptual metaphor theory, this article tracks the metaphorical framework of understanding karma as a kind of ‘heavenly bank account’ back to its roots in early European scholarship. Based on a comparison with metaphors for karma to be found in Pāli texts of the Theravāda tradition, namely, the analogies of ripening, inheritance, and the dark/bright dichotomy, this article argues that the ‘bank-account’ imagery differs in significant – if subtle – respects from these emic metaphors, displaying certain Judeo-Christian preconceptions of moral bookkeeping, sin, and salvation.     

Buddhist prajÑĀ and Greek sophia

The present review examines five books, one by a non-Baha'i, three by a Baha'i academic, and one by a Baha'i non-academic. The non-Baha'i volume, which is very short, is by a Danish sociologist of religion, Margit Warburg. It forms a solid explanatory text informed by a lengthy experience of the Baha'is both in Denmark and abroad. This review discusses, inter alia, three volumes by a Baha'i sociologist, Peter Smith. While the three titles are very different books, taken together they form an intelligent presentation of the religion from the perspective of a thoughtful insider. Finally, the article looks at a completely different sort of book, an intelligent portrayal of Baha'ism from its spiritual and moral perspectives by Moojan Momen. This last brings readers closest to typical fare for believers and new converts.     

Clinical Commentary

This paper describes a lengthy period of psychotherapy with a child. This treatment began only after a prolonged contact with other child and adolescent mental health services during which the child's difficulties, which had initially seemed to be ordinary behavioural problems, had proved puzzlingly intractable to a variety of interventions. Subsequent psychotherapy revealed a profound disorder of development which lay bath the Surface presentation. In a climate where Asperger's syndrome is often felt to be untreatable, this paper argues that some children, at least, can benefit from psychotherapy and can be helped towards real mental growth. Asperger's syndrome in children bears some striking similarities to narcissistic personality disorder as described in the adult psychoanalytic literature and this paper discusses some of the theoretical and clinical implications of the innate origins of Asperger's syndrome.     

The neural correlates of statistical learning in a word segmentation task: An fMRI study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess neural activation as participants learned to segment continuous streams of speech containing syllable sequences varying in their transitional probabilities. Speech streams were presented in four runs, each followed by a behavioral test to measure the extent of learning over time. Behavioral performance indicated that participants could discriminate statistically coherent sequences (words) from less coherent sequences (partwords). Individual rates of learning, defined as the difference in ratings for words and partwords, were used as predictors of neural activation to ask which brain areas showed activity associated with these measures. Results showed significant activity in the pars opercularis and pars triangularis regions of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). The relationship between these findings and prior work on the neural basis of statistical learning is discussed, and parallels to the frontal/subcortical network involved in other forms of implicit sequence learning are considered.     

PSYKOANALYTISKT ORIENTERAD PSYKOTERAPI

The increasing discourse of the concept of intersubjectivity in modern psychoanalysis has pushed the interest in the intrapsychic and its emphasis on drive and object into the background. Authors who wish to avoid a one-sided focus on intersubjectivity usually subscribe to a dual dimensional approach, taking both perspectives into account. In this article, the analytic situation is described not in two, but in three dimensions, the analytic function constituting a third dimension necessary for the interplay between the other two dimensions. Focusing on the analyst's position, the author presents a model that consists of (1) the-analyst-as-subject, (2) the-analyst-as-function, and (3) the-analyst-as-object. The analytic function is understood to be invested with a particular form of desire and it is argued that the asymmetry between this desire of the analyst and the desire of the analysand is a central characteristic of the analytic situation.     

Spearman's law of diminishing returns: A statistical artifact?

Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns (SLODR) is the idea that the structure of human cognitive ability is more differentiated and g a weaker determinant of cognitive performance at higher levels of ability. In this study, we distinguish between ‘traditional’ methods of testing SLODR and ‘contemporary’ methods of testing SLODR. It is the former set of methods from which the vast majority of the evidence base for SLODR derives. We demonstrated that it is easy to mimic SLODR and reverse SLODR effects in these traditional methods of assessing SLODR by using data with skewed observed variable distributions. The skewness magnitudes did not need to be large to produce these effects and they fell well within the range of values that are usually considered unproblematic for parametric statistic analysis. In simulated datasets, positive subtest skewness resulted in SLODR and negative subtest skewness resulted in reverse SLODR. In contemporary methods of testing SLODR, non-linear g-loadings or a skewed g are assumed to reflect evidence for SLODR. When we applied contemporary methods of testing SLODR to these data, there was evidence of heteroscedastic residuals but no evidence of non-linear g-loadings or skewed g distributions. We broadly replicated the effects of subtest skew from these simulated datasets in real data from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart. Results imply that traditional methods of assessing SLODR cannot distinguish between effects due to subtest characteristics that have nothing to do with differences in ability structure at different levels of g and true SLODR effects. This calls into question the empirical support for SLODR.     

Sisters of the Heart: How Women's Friendships Heal

In this article we focus on the healing aspects of women's intimate friendships with other women. In particular, we discuss the role of female neurohromone oxytocin “the love hormone” in the promotion of health and wellbeing among women. We assert that the intimate women friendship construct can enhance psychotherapy's healing and empowering functions. In this context, we examine how women's friendships can inform feminist psychotherapy. Moreover, we discuss the feminist therapeutic relationship as an intimate bond, and compare it with women's friendships. We conclude with the introduction of the special issue on “Sisters of the Heart: Women Psychotherapist Reflections on Female Friendships.”