Religious delusions and filicide: a psychodynamic model

In this article, we present a psychodynamic explanation for the complex crime of filicide motivated by religious delusions. To begin, we provide an overview of filicide, including its typology and epidemiology. Second, we examine the psychoanalytic theories of Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg so as to better understand how family-of-origin experiences add to the ways in which psychotic disorders later take shape in filicide cases. Third, we offer an explication of the psychology of religion, including the role that religious defences and religious delusions play in cases involving filicide. Ultimately, we hypothesise that mothers with religious delusions commit acts of filicide due to the dynamic and reciprocal interaction between mental illness, psychological functioning, and the psychological role played by religion. We conclude our article with a case illustration to demonstrate our theoretical model.     

广州市14种常见疾病门诊就诊时间定量分析

为了确定常见疾病的合理就诊时间,本文对广州市区县级医院和社区机构的门诊就诊时间进行了调查,结果分别是9.46分钟和5.92分钟,并进一步分析发现门诊就诊时间的长短与机构级别和病种有关,且前者的影响显著高于后者。医院管理者应科学合理地确定门诊就诊时间。     

Vicissitudes of ideas of cure in analysands and their analysts: a longitudinal interview study

This longitudinal prospective study focuses on analysands' and analysts' implicit ideas of how psychoanalysis might help analysands' psychological problems. Seven analysands and their analysts were periodically interviewed. Single ideas of cure from 75 interviews were inductively categorized. Nine distinct types of cures emerged, representing the wished-for goals of psychoanalysis, as well as the actions to achieve the wished-for changes. Each category might comprise more or less utopian ideas of wished-for cure as well as ideas of an attainable, more limited cure, or combinations of these. The utopian ideas of wished-for cures persisted throughout the psychoanalytic process for more than half the analysands and analysts. The abandonment of these ideas was related to the experienced outcome of psychoanalysis. The relation between the theories of one analysand and her analyst is explored in depth in a case study with special emphasis on the analytic process. The study suggests that the psychoanalytic process might profit from the analyst's observance of such incongruities and an openness to work through them.     

Should supportive measures and relational variables be considered a part of psychoanalytic technique? Some empirical considerations

This article presents some quantitative findings from a survey of 89 psychoanalysts (all members of the American Psychoanalytic Association or the International Psychoanalytical Association) about their own experiences in analysis. A comprehensive questionnaire was used to collect retrospective data about (1) how participants felt they benefited from their analyses and (2) how they remembered their analysts’ technique, personality, and style of relating. A correlational analysis found that, according to our participants’ ratings, the most beneficial analyses were associated with having a caring and emotionally engaged analyst who possessed positive relational and personality qualities, used supportive techniques in addition to classical techniques, and pursued therapeutic as well as analytic goals. Outcomes rated as successful were also associated with experiencing a good ‘fit’, a good working relationship, and a positive therapeutic alliance. Our results support the call for an expanded view of acceptable analytic technique (e.g. Schacter and Kächele, 2007) .     

Informed consent as a prescription calling for debate between analysts and researchers(1)

This article is a review of the international scientific literature on informed consent and its use in some of the constituent organizations of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Because psychoanalysis comprises a theory based on practice, the dearth of clinical material for study, training and research purposes is a serious problem for analysts. Supervisions, presentations at scientific societies and congresses, publications and teaching material involve patients to an extent that goes beyond the work done in their sessions. Should consent be requested in these cases? This contribution addresses controversial and long‐standing issues such as informed consent and confidentiality, audio recording of treatments, knowledge production, the ambivalence of participating subjects over time and the perspective of analysts and patients respectively. The authors consider the various alternative approaches available for the handling of these ethical dilemmas without losing sight of the patient’s dignity and personal rights, while also taking account of the position of the analyst.     

Global hip‐hop identities: Black youth,psychoanalytic action research,and the Moving to the Beat project

The paper presents a psychoanalytically informed analysis of the concept of hip‐hop identity through the lens of a four‐year social action research and documentary film project, titled Moving to the Beat (M2B). The M2B project sought to document and unpack key psychological and social dynamics behind the struggle for a global identity among Black hip‐hop activists in Africa and America. Two groups were formed, one in Portland, Oregon and a second in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with the aim of enlisting hip‐hop as a mode of cross‐cultural dialogue and as a forum for activism. Three key themes are discussed as they emerged as sites of creative conflict through the M2B project: the struggle to establish a progressive identity over against politically and psychologically regressive currents in hip‐hop culture, the search for authenticity in the context of globally manufactured identities, and differing conceptions of rebellion and intergenerational conflict. The paper describes how psychoanalytic theory informed the process of producing the Moving to the Beat documentary film and working through these sites of conflict in negotiating the borders of hip‐hop global identities. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of words on children with ADHD and DAMP Consequences for psychoanalytic technique

Children with attention-defi cit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and disorder of attention, motility control, and perception (DAMP) are often sensitive to the analyst's interventions. This is not always due to the literal import of the intervention. The children sometimes react as if the words were dangerous concrete objects, which they must physically fend off. The author traces this phenomenon to the child's unstable internal situation. A bad, un-containing internal object is easily awakened and threatens to expel the analyst's words independently of their content. This results in violent clinical situations. Infant research and psychoanalytic work with infants and mothers evince how a complex semiotic process develops between mother and baby. The prerequisite for this process to get started and maintained is a secure external object, which gradually is internalized. Findings from developmental research and clinical infant work are used to illuminate analytic work with children with ADHD and DAMP. Vignettes demonstrate how important it is for the analyst to phrase interpretations after having gauged the state of the analysand's internal object as well as his/her own countertransference. If this is overlooked, the psychoanalytic dialogue easily capsizes. The author provides some technical recommendations on the psychoanalysis of these children. As part of the theoretical discussion he raises the general question of how the representations, which the baby forms in interaction with the mother, and the analysand forms in interaction with the analyst, should be classifi ed. Rather than dividing them into bipartite thing- or word-presentations (Freud), the author suggests C. S. Peirce's tripartite semiotic classifi cation in that the baby forms representations of icons, indices, and symbols.     

A shadow concept

The author focuses on the signifi cance of preconscious thinking, and its relationship to what we think of as unconscious fantasies. He reopens Freud's forgotten struggle with preconscious thinking, while he explores preconscious thinking as the basis for thinking about psychoanalytic treatment. This includes our goals in bringing an idea to the analysand's attention, and the role of transitional space where thoughts and feelings can be played with.     

Julie's museum: The evolution of thinking, dreaming and historicization in the treatment of traumatized patients

The author contends that, following Freud, trauma may be viewed as a disruption of the ego's 'protective shield' and that a central factor of this shield is an internalized relationship to a thinking-containing mother. Severe trauma destroy this inner connection, resulting in the reversal of a-function and the establishment of a rigid traumatic organization (ß-screen) that brings coherence to the shattered psyche. However, this is an 'organized chaos' in which concrete forms of thinking predominate. The patient's ability to think, dream and imagine is signifi cantly curtailed and she is consequently locked in a traumatic world from which she is unable to evolve. He offers a detailed case history to illustrate these points and the vital role the analyst's imaginative capacities play in the analysis of such individuals. Finally, he addresses the development of the capacity to represent the trauma, starting with primitive, often somatically encoded experiences, and evolving toward the capacity for historicization.