Kipkel – Kinder psychisch kranker Eltern

W?hrend meiner (Susanna Staets) langj?hrigen T?tigkeit als Kinder- und Familientherapeutin in psychologischen Beratungsstellen begegneten mir immer wieder Familien, in denen ein oder beide Elternteile an einer psychischen Erkrankung litten. Passende Betreuungs- und Beratungsangebote für die Kinder und ihre Familien gab es zu dieser Zeit kaum: Zum einen war und ist die psychische Erkrankung sowohl innerhalb der Familie als auch nach au?en hin h?ufig mit einem Tabu belegt – die Familien leben meistens in einem sehr geschlossenen System. Folglich wird die innere Not und überforderung der Kinder oft erst dann offenbar, wenn sie selbst Verhaltensauff?lligkeiten zeigen. Zum anderen ist eine kontinuierliche Begleitung durch Betreuungssysteme schwierig, die von den Familien ein hohes Ma? an Eigenverantwortung, Zuverl?ssigkeit und Verantwortungsbewusstsein erfordern.     

The last invasion of human privacy and its psychological consequences on survivors: A critique of the practice of embalming

In spite of the fact that it is required only occasionally for sanitary reasons and not legally mandatory, the practice of embalming is widespread in contemporary American society. This study explores the historical, cultural and psychological factors which gave rise to the practice of embalming and why the practice continues. Two case studies are presented in which delayed grief reactions were present; linkages with embalming are described. It is suggested that the frightening finitude of the self and a fear of death in modern society have led to practices in which the corpse is viewed as looking “natural,” thus denying the reality of death. Embalming is seen as the final assault on the self, which can also carry with it problematic psychological consequences for the survivors.     

Transference and the idea of God

While many factors influence the course of therapy, based on empirical evidence a strong case can be made for the importance of religious beliefs influencing the process of transference. During a ten-year period of private psychiatric practice, the senior author saw 353 patients suffering from anxiety and neurotic depression. The form of treatment was individual, dynamic, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy with occasional use of psychotropic drugs. Forty percent of the patients who were seen were Catholic; forty percent were Protestant; and twenty percent were Jewish.Protestants, Catholics, and Jews bring differing conceptions of God to the transference phenomenon in individual psychotherapy. Basing findings on extensive clinical evidence, this study seeks to explain why this occurs, and the need for the psychotherapist to be aware of religious factors that influence the course of psychotherapy.He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and Associate Professor at the Institute of Psychology of the Pontifical Gregorial University in Rome, Italy.     

Investigation of psycho-physiological interactions between patient and therapist during a psychodynamic therapy and their relation to speech using in terms of entropy analysis using a neural network approach

In the present contribution we investigate in an exemplary single-case study the behavior of psycho-physiological variables in psychotherapy sessions. The values are measured continously during a single session at the same time for both patient and therapist. The analysis of the data is done using an artificial neural network approach for non-linear principal component analysis and faithful data representation/visualization and compression required for subsequent process analysis. The used network (growing self-organizing map, GSOM) thereby uses a kernel smoothing for improved data density estimation. In this way, we are able to generate an entropy model of psycho-physiological variability detecting emotionally instable phases during the therapy process. We relate our finding to results obtained by speech analysis of the therapy sessions according to the cycle model invented by Mergenthaler. Thus, we get preliminary suggestions how psycho-physiological reactions are related to the therapeutic process.