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The very existence of truth, let alone its worth, is currently under attack from many quarters. In the wider culture, disinformation and other forms of misrepresenting the truth spread far and wide, as information conduits proliferate. This paper suggests some reasons for the "anti-truth" trend. Mainstream media have played a role, as have theoreticians from fields as diverse as philosophy, psychoanalysis, science, and literary criticism. "Anti-truth" trends are having a serious impact on psychological treatment, affecting its content and the conception of its goals. This paper suggests some problematic outcomes of this phenomenon for practitioners and patients in various forms of psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper raises and addresses issues to do with leadership and child psychotherapy, beginning with a report on a systematic review of papers about leadership in the Journal of Child Psychotherapy (JCP). The authors establish that leadership is expressed implicitly rather than as an important issue in its own right with relevance to clinical work, service development and the ongoing viability of psychoanalytic child psychotherapy. When reviewing the limited literature available, the authors classify them into five types of article: tribute to leaders past; clinical leadership; threat to survival and call to action; organisational leadership; and exemplary papers describing professional leadership. The authors query why the leadership literature is sparse and inexplicit and respond by using the theme of 'dual citizenship' to explore the issue from a psychoanalytic and organisational perspective. The psychoanalytic perspective explores tensions and barriers that may be profession-specific in relation to leadership. The organisational perspective explores the wider literature on leadership, starting with the concept of 'wicked problems and clumsy solutions'. The authors introduce and describe a 'leadership stance' that is compatible with psychoanalytic practice in context. This requires opening up leadership activity to the same scrutiny and reflective practice as clinical work, which provides ways of containing organisational and career anxieties and perplexing clinical problems. This paper is a call to action in regard to integrating leadership into the training and the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of the Boston Study Group and the Relationalist's theories of enactments in which I maintain that enactments can be viewed either as an unknowable past expressing itself in present action, or as a process shift coming out of incremental shifts in the fit in here and now interaction. Often, it is difficult to distinguish enactments from any ongoing analytic experience oscillating between defense and revelation on the part of the analyst, analysand, or both. Yet, I agree with Goldin that change is not simply moving along, fitting together better, and reaching a higher level of organization as in infancy. An analytic interchange cannot be understood "separately from the project of grasping experience into words." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion compares interventions that are derived from reverie, bodily sensations, and dreams, with traditional transference interpretations. Using Seward's clinical vignettes, the author delineates subtle differences between projective identification, enactments, and the selfobject function. She suggests that body-mind-self experiences of the analyst bring the selfobject function to its most precise position. Furthermore, she argues that evocation of images, body sensations, and disclosed dreams are, in fact, interpretations and that such interventions do not strive to generate repetitions but to promote potential space and openness to disavowed areas of the mind. These interventions, says the author, are not better than traditional verbal interpretations or more correct but sometimes simply more useful to the patient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the journey taken by experienced psychotherapists as they embark on doctoral research, highlighting the adjustments involved in moving from being a clinician to becoming a researcher. Having touched on the complex relationship between psychotherapy and research as a whole, including how badly this has affected the development of a robust evidence base for many approaches, the paper describes the development of a post-qualifying research programme for those grafting research skills onto their clinical roles. The paper then considers how the kind of research undertaken by psychodynamic psychotherapists has shifted from being primarily focussed on single case studies – so remaining closer to the clinical writing of the past – to including both more general social science research methodologies and more precise psychoanalytic methodologies, capable of exploring in depth the processes at work in the therapeutic encounter. The main focus of the paper is on the impact on the students of undertaking their first research project. At the beginning of this process nearly all students underestimated just how much of a shift in their thinking it would involve, and the paper captures some of the key issues and powerful moments reported after their first year. They speak of the humbling impact of conducting a structured literature review and of the complexity of finding a truly researchable question and viable design, as well as the appreciation of the difference between clinical illustration and evidence. They speak of the impact of thinking about the ethical issues involved in research, and of the need to interrogate their design in order to minimise bias. One of the interesting – and to them surprising – effects is that the shift to research-mindedness feeds back into their clinical identities, in a way that is both challenging and invigorating, overall boosting their confidence as practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future and vibrancy of psychoanalysis rests on increasing the accessibility to training for early career clinicians. By recognizing and addressing the numerous barriers to the immersive experience of psychoanalytic training, we can foster strong candidate groups. This paper recounts one institute's process of creating multiple points of access and substantive mentorship for new clinicians, aiming to nurture involvement over time with institute members and its professional offerings. Valuing both individual developmental trajectories and attracting diverse applicants across disciplines while attending to the significant obstacles many potential trainees face, generated increased interest and matriculation in both psychotherapy and psychoanalytic training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion of the paper merging and emerging: A nonlinear portrait of intersubjectivity during psychotherapy focuses on how the original paper demonstrates the usefulness of the concepts of nonlinear dynamics systems theory (NLD) to clinical psychoanalysis. Diagnosis conceptualize in NLD terms successfully resists the pressure to reduce complex situations to overly simple few word phrases. The phenomena of transference and repetition are redescribed as resulting from an iterative process that is evident in complex adaptive systems. The model of psychoanalysis in terms of coupled oscillators is demonstrated to be clinically useful as is the concept of emergence which overcomes some of the less useful aspects of the reductionist program. The idea of studying boundaries per se, as opposed to their function of separating individuals, arises naturally from the study of fractals and promises to clarify the oversimplified discussions of these matters in the psychoanalytic literature. The original author has successfully demonstrated how useful NLD conceptualizations can be to the clinical psychoanalyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In taking up the matter of intersubjectivity in Kleinian-Bionian theories Brown creatively reimagines the clinical situation, transcending demarcations of analytic schools to arrive (though never fully arrive) at new understandings of interaction. I discuss Brown's engaging paper from my own emerging concept of enactivity, drawing distinctions between this approach and Bion's approach and extending the enactive to a consideration of enactive fields that, like Brown's paper, draws on the seminal reinterpretation of Kleinian theory by the Barangers. In writing of the field as an emergent process of becoming I rely on Merleau-Ponty's notion of 'singing the world' to illustrate my developing understanding of the possibilities for interaction in the Kleinian-Bionian tradition. My comments on Brown's clinical case material focus on what appears to me to be the intersubjective aspects of his approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am very pleased to be given the opportunity to discuss Professor Seligman's paper. I find the paper beautifully written and extremely interesting. It touches on many relevant issues in terms of developmental psychology, differential psychopathology, and clinical technique. In this discussion I try to concentrate on one important clinical point: What constitutes psychic change? Seligman's technique to create “corrective engagements” by bringing “actions” like changes in the payment contract and “metaphors” like the Joan of Arc story and book, did facilitate intellectual development and some kind of emotional resonance, but I think they also acted more as a kind of comforters (Winnicott, 1985) that neutralized the emotional explosions and implosions (Kleimberg, 2006) that Harriet would have had to endure to truly have an experience of disillusionment, separation, and identification with the object if she were to truly develop an emotional symbolic function that would facilitate long-lasting states of mentalization and reflective functioning. I value Seligman's contribution enormously. He is opening up a valuable window to explore and think about areas of psychopathology that are difficult to understand and treat. At the same time, I want to be cautious about introducing new psychoanalytic techniques that can be misused by our colleagues by assuming that these new techniques have produced or can produce the necessary deep, internal, and long-lasting psychic change that we all struggle to achieve with all patients, particularly with these difficult narcissistic and character disorder borderline ones. This type of technique could be useful for patients who we feel have no chance of being helped with our current analytic repertoire and perhaps by accepting at the same time that achieving this type of fragile and incomplete type of mentalization is as much as can be expected from them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following is a discussion of a case presentation by Katherine (Kate) Oram in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. The discussion focuses on the issue of aggression expressed by the patient and the analyst from the perspective of interpersonal theory. How aspects of unspoken anger and resentment are woven through an abiding connection and development of trust is addressed. The relevance of aggression to the particular features of this case's termination and posttermination phase are explored as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This discussion speaks to the creative dimension in the clinical encounter described by Levine in her paper. In particular, it addresses the creativity necessary to move beyond impasses in the treatment. The positive and negative associations to enactments are discussed as well as the creative possibilities offered in dreamwork and the analytic relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Hysteria and Humiliation,” it is argued, performs a small miracle, weaving inner and outer perspectives on a seemingly mysterious condition into a clinically useful formulation. Its bold new thinking is shown to clear up many conceptual problems about the state of mind and sufferings that a diagnosis of “hysteria” usually designates. This paper, it is suggested, also puts paid to the classical denigration of women implicit in the very category of hysteria itself, thus advancing the psychoanalysis of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary on Eyal Rozmarin's paper 'To Be Is to Betray' considers the place of history in the psychoanalytic encounter. Examining texts by Adorno and Ferenczi, the author cautions against 'radical cures' that conflate political values with analytic ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was in the years immediately following World War II and through the 1950s that the psychoanalytic establishment officially defined psychoanalysis as a subspecialty of psychiatry, and it was in that context of the professionalization of American medicine that they codified the distinction between psychoanalysis and (psychoanalytic) psychotherapy. In this commentary on Steven Stern's “Session Frequency and the Definition of Psychoanalysis,” I deconstruct a series of binaries that was built into the analysis/therapy distinction and that has plagued our discipline. It is argued that psychoanalysis identified itself with the culturally “masculine” and heterosexual values of autonomous individuality (the intrapsychic), while it split off all that was relational and social (interpersonal), marked as “feminine,” homosexual, and “primitive,” onto psychotherapy, which it then devalued. The paper then examines the implications for practice and psychoanalytic education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author offers insights on papers in the "European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling" (EJPC) concerning the use of photographs in the psychological therapies. He emphasizes that the discussions of topics on psychotherapy, photography, and the various forms of therapeutic work with cameras are all fundamentally dwell on the visual and its processing. Also mentioned is the engagement with family photographs as a way of making photography than any psychological analysis.

This paper expands on Seligman's ideas about mentalization and the challenges of working with patients who cannot mentalize. Seligman's clinical presentation demonstrates that much valuable analytic work takes place without explicit reference to the transference. Drawing on Britton's notion of the triangular internal space that allows for reflective thought, we propose that analytic interest in an external object, discovered through the relationship and meaningful to both patient and analyst, helps create the same kind of space. The difference-within-sameness of shared contemplation can increase receptivity to divergent perspectives. Likewise, the “third object” can become a therapeutic metaphor, open to various meanings without being limited to any one interpretation. We trace how Seligman and his patient use a series of third objects in their work together. In this process, the patient moves from a transitional relationship of minimal differentiation to an increasingly secure sense of her own separateness, beginning to accept, and even enjoy, having a motivated mind of her own. Finally, we discuss how Ferro's concept of the analytic field offers a theoretical rationale for the effectiveness of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author considers Cooper's notion of the pluralistic third from several angles as Cooper's use of the term covers a range of applications from that of an internal supervisor to the use of ideas from psychoanalytic traditions other than one's own in evaluating one's clinical work. The impression created of the American situation is contrasted with the institutionalized pluralism of the British Psychoanalytical Society since the Second World War. The author believes that the theoretical question of the analyst's accountability to a professional authority is overdetermined in the paper because the clinical material is dominated by the patient's problems in facing up to parental authority. A crucial enactment is seen as starting at the analyst's first contact with the patient, which seems to subvert the analyst's capacity to be an authority figure. The analyst finds a working relationship with his own psychoanalytic authority in the second session of the analysis but seems to lose it through an overextension of the ideas of "play," self-questioning, and the seeking of agreement between patient and analyst. The author considers the clinical material from the point of view that his peer supervision group would take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relative to traditional professions like psychotherapy, organizational consulting includes more diverse practitioners and practices but far fewer formal requirements for entry or standards for practice. To define better boundaries around and within the field, I highlight the importance in Kenneth Eisold's and Marc Maltz's case material of distinguishing between organizational consultants and psychoanalysts and between different types of consultants in terms of their professional roles, services provided, and associated skills and knowledge. I underscore the value consultants bring to their clients when they are able to help diagnose and address performance issues that are at once social and operational, interpersonal and organizational, and unconscious and conscious. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Perchance to Sleep: Minding the Unworded Body in Psychoanalysis, Ellen F. Fries masterfully articulates the complexities of right-brain to right-brain, body-to-body interactions between herself and her patient. Her work highlights the dominance of the nonverbal implicit self over the verbal, explicit self and provides an excellent example of clinical work in which she thoughtfully attends to the unspoken, bodily based communication that takes place within the therapeutic dyad. In this discussion, I offer perspectives from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy on the impact of early attachment on the procedural organization of action sequences that reflect and sustain the implicit self, and embody unconscious relational expectations. The following topics are addressed: (a) Physical actions that provide avenues of exploration into the implicit self, especially actions such as reaching out, making eye contact, or maintaining an upright posture that are abandoned or distorted when they are ineffective in eliciting the desired response from attachment figures; (b) Body-oriented interventions that target the involuntary physical spasms that Fries' patient experiences, which are associated with unresolved physiological arousal originally stimulated in the face of trauma; and (c) The nonverbal manifestation and negotiation of enactments that emerge from the body-to-body dialogue between the implicit selves of patient and therapist. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

My discussion embroiders around Thomas Rosbrow's view of Murakami as a “trauma analyst.” I highlight the ways in which Murakami's writing reflects his keen sensitivity to existential uncertainty and how he seems to understand trauma, much as I do, as a shattering experience that destroys the certainties that organize psychological life and generates efforts at self restoration. Although I share Rosbrow's view that “After the Quake” depicts a character's awakening from the dissociative manifestations of trauma, I spell out how my perspective on this process differs from his. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This commentary describes certain differences in how Relational and Contemporary Freudian analysts approach both the conceptual dynamics of hysterical functioning and its clinical management. The discussion shows how, despite considerable agreement between these two groups concerning the critical importance of a receptive other for the successful buildup of virtually every aspect of mental life (not to be confused with the concept of co-creation), they also have quite substantial differences; differences that are rooted in contrasting basic assumptions about the ways in which fantasies, unconscious transference displacements, and self-regulating repetitive processes are set up in the mind. The discussion also illustrates how the clinical management of hysteria differs considerably depending on whether what is taking place in the consulting room is conceived of as an autonomous, repetitive process that the patient brings to the treatment and repeats (one way or another) over and over again, or whether it is conceived of as co-created, belonging to the minds of both persons in the room, even if not in equal measure or equal ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contributions of Allan N. Schore, Wilma Bucci, and James L. Fosshage in this issue highlight the continuing efforts of these researchers to understand and illuminate the nature of implicit and explicit processing and to construct theories based on their observations and their relationship to therapeutic action. An examination of the core elements of each theory-Schore's focus on right brain processes and the importance of affect, Bucci's further delineation of subsymbolic processes that participate in the formation of emotion schemas, and Fosshage's emphasis on the importance of imagistic symbolic encoding and processing and the interplay of implicit and explicit processing in creating two pathways to therapeutic change-is presented with emphasis on aspects of interpenetration and difference. Areas of further investigation that highlight the importance of implicit processes are discussed. They include inference making, the supervisory paradigm as a means of promoting change in clinical work, the use of videotapes in parent/child observation, and the interactive use of images and memory triggers in an experimental design to assist Alzheimer's patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary highlights specific aspects of a psychoanalytic complexity perspective in considering and discussing Terry Marks-Tarlow's article, 'Merging and Emerging: A Nonlinear Portrait of Intersubjectivity During Psychotherapy.' The advantages of a complexity theory sensibility reside in the areas of (a) providing a robust theoretical framework for understanding the sources and phenomenology of complex emotional life and (b) understanding the clinical implications of thinking through a complexity theory lens. The latter involves examining the attitudes that emanate from such a revolutionary perspective and their impact on the therapeutic relationship and on therapeutic action and change. Special emphasis is placed on the distinction between two vital dimensions of psychoanalytic discourse: the phenomenological and the explanatory. This distinction is used as a lens through which the author considers the essential themes of understanding the complexity of the multiple sources of personal lived experience and their concomitant meanings, personal situtatedness (or 'thrownness'), emotional responsibility, and personal freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brown's historical overview of post-Kleinian psychoanalysis traces key steps in the evolving and diverse practice of working in the psychoanalytic situation while regarding it as a two-person field. The Barangers' 'The Analytic Situation as a Dynamic Field' is central to his narrative. I develop my understanding of the originality of their contribution in theorizing a situational unconscious, and of their continuing relevance for thinking about analytic listening and intersubjective collaboration. Brown presents a countertransference dream of his own along with the dream of a patient as an example of the Barangers' concept of the 'shared unconscious fantasy' of the analytic couple. A detailed alternative reading of Brown's clinical vignette reveals an absence of fit with the Barangers' views on collaboration in the analytic situation. Some uses of Bion's 'dreaming' and 'becoming' are implicitly questioned as they risk encouraging the idealization of special states over process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social nature of dreaming is discussed. Those few remembered and shared dreams (out of the totality of experienced and soon-forgotten dreams) are eventually shaped by the particular culture that reads into dreams its own way of viewing private psychological experience. Psychoanalysis is one such culture. It is recommended that the dream, on its own terms and in its own images and stories, be allowed to lead the way in psychotherapy. The significance of the creations of the mind asleep is discussed in relation to Freud's and Jung's mission to create a depth therapy for the psychological maladies attendant to life in modern Western culture. Dr. Hoge's contribution is significant in its subtle and intelligent evocation of the rich complexities of the world of dreams. Her use of the dream within the dream opens into a consideration of the sleeping mind's capacity for play and for stretching the boundaries of psychotherapy. Her discussion of the intermixing of subjectivities in therapeutic dream discussion (“Was it her dream or mine?”) leads to a consideration of the relationship between psychoanalytic work with dreams and ancient healing methods that often include an interest in the healer's own dreams as locus of treatment. Finally, there is a discussion of the relation of dreams to the emerging electronic virtual world which replaces the real and natural world with its own designs. In such a world, the dream within a dream may serve as a metaphor for modern life itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am postulating an irreconcilable discrepancy between psychoanalytic metapsychology and praxis. Metapsychology reaches for the abstract, for the general class of which the patient is an ostensible member—said class, somewhat tautologically, demonstrating the validity of the professed metapsychology. Yet, from the Interpersonal view, therapy depends on grasping the highly idiosyncratic way the patient plays out his or her life both in and out of the therapy room. Abstracting the patient concretizes the process and reduces information. As a consequence, the clinical material falls short of utilizing the rich, recursive patterning of the therapist's exchanges with the patient, failing to fully realize the uncanny enmeshment of unconscious gears that so defines the psychoanalytic mystique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Grossmark expands our current understanding of the relationship between hermeneutic psychoanalysis, relational psychoanalysis, and complexity theory, illustrating this relationship in the context of presenting his work and discussion of his group psychotherapy experiences. Complexity theory continues to be increasingly elaborated in psychoanalysis and integrated into psychoanalytic theories centered on multiplicity, dissociation, and enactment. The utility, vicissitudes, and potential problems with this integration necessitate an emphasis on the distinction between thinking phenomenologically and thinking explanatorily. Recommendations are offered for a more seamless integration and application of these theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalytic field theory is integral to relational praxis. In his study of the analytic field and its interpersonal complexities and relational intricacies, Tubert-Oklander emphasizes its clinical promise. Tubert-Oklander's field orientation, however, is a conservative and limited one. This commentary proposes a new, more radical coparticipant theory of analytic praxis. As a unique form of clinical participation, coparticipant inquiry is marked by an emphasis on patients' and analysts' relational mutuality, coequal analytic authority, and dyadic uniqueness. Coparticipant inquiry represents both a one-person and two-person psychology—an integral of classical individualism and the social emphasis of the interpersonal/relational viewpoint. Coparticipant analysis calls for a new, multidimensional concept of the self that reconciles the seeming paradox that we are simultaneously communal and individual beings—from birth embedded in a series of social field, yet always uniquely individual. This psychoanalytic dialectic between personal, nonrelational selfic "I" processes and an interpersonal "me" pattern brings into relational play such concepts as will, self-determination, and agency. Coparticipation promotes a technically freer, more self-expressive, and spontaneous inquiry and emphasizes the curative immediacy of new relational experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clinical case that centers on a female patient who presented with a generalized sense of despair, hopelessness, and shame is discussed. Infant research, child development, neurobiology, trauma research, and nonlinear dynamic systems theory are employed in recontextualizing concepts of defense, resistance, dissociation, development, and therapeutic action. Specific positive new experiences, emergent from within the analytic dyad, lead to the development of consolidated, integrated self-states and a securely consolidated, intimate attachment to the other, which proved mutative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic climate change has been a crisis that human beings have spent decades being in denial of, at great cost to nature, biodiversity and ultimately to ourselves. Facing the reality of this crisis and the damage done to the natural world has been unbearable and places us in touch with primitive anxieties about our own destructiveness. There is hope that our species can take a different path than the current one of living beyond our means. Some momentum towards change is beginning to occur: but will meaningful change be expedited soon enough to protect our struggling planet? The focus of this paper is to explore how psychoanalytic thinking can provide a deeper insight into the anxiety that the climate crisis is bringing to the fore, especially in young people who are wary of adult figures and institutions that are not seen to be doing enough to address this issue. Through the work of child and adolescent psychotherapy with a young person, the impact of climate change is considered in terms of the relationship between internal and external worlds. Also discussed is the importance of the psychotherapist themselves in bearing the reality of the climate crisis and its accompanying anxieties, especially when working with climate anxiety and climate trauma in our patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to focus on an aspect of psychodynamic psychotherapy that includes psychoanalysis to illustrate the important element in the psychotherapeutic relationship called recognition. This involves an emotional sharing with the patient of the importance of particular life experiences that he has had and as such this not only cements the relationship but becomes the substrate of change and an internalization of the therapist that persists after the end of treatment. This interaction parallels the experience with a responsive mother able to echo the infant's experience. The experience of recognition is illustrated with 10 case presentations that demonstrate the power of this factor in a variety of patients ranging from brief consultations to psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy have evolved deeply over the past half century. This paper shows some the changes I have witnessed in them, and the challenges we face in this change of era, at the edge of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Some the challenges are examined: knowing how to transmit in our daily practice the essential relationality of the human being; the relational essence of the process of change through psychotherapy; and a review of our contribution to our institutions being genuinely relational, that is, that we take more care of the space that the Other can inhabit than of preserving our own. We need hope: the hope to change and (again) be people, in connection with others, regaining confidence and being able to be ourself (to be ourselves with others). That is the meaning of our activity, what it is to be a psychoanalyst/psychotherapist today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a striking lack of interest in reforming training and creating new forms of transmitting the essential knowledge required to function as a psychoanalyst. This paper presents a model for training psychotherapists in use in Finland, in which private institutes offer training in collaboration with the universities. The roles and functions of the universities and the institutes in the training are described. The implications of this mixed-model training are discussed, viewed through the experiences of some teachers involved in implementing the model. The teachers were asked to describe their experiences in regard to certain questions: What happens, when a third party becomes involved in the training process? Is it possible to maintain a psychoanalytic curriculum of studies in such a context? What does the relative loss of autonomy signify? What are the implications for the psychoanalytic institutes? Regarding the content of the training, the experiences seem more positive than expected. Institutes seem to have managed to adapt to the new requirements while maintaining the psychoanalytic core of the training. However, the model contains elements that can pose threats to the roles of the institutes and the position of psychoanalytic thinking as the base for psychotherapy in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the controversies in the empirically supported treatment (EST) in psychotherapy. Empirical support for psychoanalytic treatment; Assessment on the conservative aspects of the length-of-treatment; Emphasis on EST motivation by economic over ethical condition.

In this paper, the authors try to understand the concepts of tribe and tribalism and their effect on our professional identities as child psychotherapists. Firstly, we will define these concepts and retrospectively go through the history and way that child psychotherapy developed and became a profession in its own right. Hearing about the trauma of war and the schisms within the profession between the different groups/tribes (Kleinians and Post Kleinians, Independents and Anna Freudians) motivated us to explore the defensive mechanisms that still keep us, as a profession, apart and divided. We have employed in this paper psychoanalytic and group analytic thinking, as well as some anthropological and neuroscientific perspectives, which all offer us some in-depth ideas about the processes involved and the ways that the different groups of thought within the profession are still kept apart. We will also look beyond these tribal states of mind, suggesting ways of collaborating and debating, to further enrich our theories and clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an account of Psychoanalytic Parent Infant Psychotherapy (PPIP) by a white therapist with a mixed heritage family during the coronavirus pandemic. It describes changes to the distant relationship between a mother and her infant son who appears at first to be developing an avoidant, dissociated defensive strategy to ward off painful projections from his traumatised parent. Necessary modifications in treatment due to working remotely contributed to several technical adjustments made. The paper attempts to consider the inclusion of race as a fully integrated aspect of working in a transcultural field, taking into account the 'ghosts in society'. The specific trauma of racist abuse, with an emphasis on colourism that can be experienced by mixed heritage families is discussed. The key to the improved relationship between child and mother by the end of the Parent Infant Psychotherapy is postulated to have come from reflection on the therapist's countertransference in regard to racism, that then enabled both therapist and patient/s to recognise and begin to work through experiences, thoughts and fantasies about belonging, heritage and racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of kinship care upon the child, as observed through the clinical lens of child psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It acknowledges the social care and policy landscape, which retains a widely held belief that kinship care is a preferable option to foster care. In the light of this belief, the paper also draws attention to the internal and external dynamics inherent in the complexities of this arrangement as presented in the child's psychotherapy and the parallel parent work. Clinical vignettes are used to illuminate the often unconscious, painful and confusing thoughts, feelings and fantasies experienced by both the child and the kinship parent. Psychoanalytic ideas relating to Freud's 'The Uncanny' and Winnicott's paper 'Mirror-role of the mother and family in child development' are used to underpin the clinical material and reflections. The paper culminates in emphasising the need for practitioners to be attentive to these dynamics, and to provide robust support for the kinship parents, in processing their kinship experience and the intergenerational traumas it may stir up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the implementation of psychodynamic treatments in Croatia, and the development of training programmes and professional bodies to facilitate this approach. The article is written in three parts, commencing with a historical overview. This is followed by a detailed description of the development of Group Analysis in Croatia. The paper concludes with a comprehensive report of the RIPEPP programme, a psychodynamic intervention for people experiencing psychosis and members of their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to emphasize the fundamental role of unconscious processes in our adaptation. We will point out how we are able to unconsciously perform higher mental functions such as setting goals and planning how to pursue them, dealing with complex data, and making choices and judgments. In the first part of this paper, we will describe the main features of conscious and unconscious processes as pointed out by recent empirical research studies, and we will see how safety is essential in pursuing our fundamental goals, and how unconscious mental processes are strongly oriented towards preserving our safety and pursuing these goals. Finally, we will discuss control-mastery theory (CMT), an integrative, relational, cognitive-dynamic theory of mental functioning, psychopathology, and psychotherapy processes developed by Joseph Weiss and empirically validated by Weiss, Harold Sampson, and the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group over the last 50 years. This conceptualizes unconscious processes starting from this "higher unconscious mental functioning" paradigm and, in accordance with research data, stresses that our main goal is to adapt to reality and pursue adaptive developmental goals while preserving our safety. Three clinical vignettes will help show how the concepts proposed by CMT have important implications for therapeutic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses aspects of a report by Antony Garelick regarding psychosis as a defense mechanism against unbearable terror. The author relates her experiences of encountering individuals with psychosis, including once when she was in training as a clinical psychologist and once when she was working with her first patient as part of an analytic training case, and explains how the experiences helped her to help her patients.

This paper explores spiritual dimensions of the psyche as originally conceptualized by Jung, including its intimate ties to our humanity as well as its relationship with mysticism, numinosity, and the religious attitude. Additional ideas from other psychoanalysts and within depth psychology regarding spirituality, mysticism, and the spiritual psyche, are surveyed and illustrated by personal and professional examples. The paper draws on experiential evidence and emphasizes knowing the spiritual psyche from real lived experiences, especially as expressed through synchronicities. This paper notes limitations of evidence-based therapy and introduces the term synchronicity-informed psychotherapy as a legitimate focus of therapy and analysis particularly as a way to know and engage with the spiritual psyche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates a phenomenon observed in parent–infant psychotherapy (PIP). Metaphors emerge in the analyst and, once voiced, they can become tools for understanding the present predicament of mother and/or child. The article contains vignettes from work with a mother and her son, four weeks old when PIP started. They are followed by a vignette of an adult analysand. In both settings, the analyst found himself in an impasse, until he came up with a metaphor expressed to the mother and the analysand, respectively. The paper investigates why PIP experiences might inspire an analyst to suggest metaphors to adult patients as well and thence to understand their suffering better. Aspects of linguistic theory underlining the infantile roots of metaphors are submitted as well as other analysts' views of using metaphors at work. It describes how the validity of a metaphor – whether it expresses something essential about the patient's internal world – should be assessed by following up his/her response to it. It defends the position that metaphor, if used with parsimony and sobriety, is a valuable tool in enabling the patient to map their internal world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, first meetings in analytic therapy are considered thematically, experientially and pragmatically. Attention is given to how we think and feel about beginning therapy, and how these first sessions can be structured so as to facilitate the start of a collaborative analytic project. The history of ideas about first meetings is reviewed and the perspectives in this paper are located in this unfolding narrative. The contributions of several psychoanalytic writers whose ideas have influenced my own are considered. The focus throughout is on the hopes and anxieties of both patient and therapist and how these emerge experientially and procedurally in first meetings. The relational traditions introduced in first meetings can structure opportunities for collaborative, transformational work over the course of time. The ideas presented in this paper are illustrated by an extended case example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a response to the six papers comprising this special issue on Love, Sex and Psychotherapy in a Postromantic Era. The theme of temporality is explored in reading the papers: specifically, time in terms of self-other development and the capacity to relate to others as a separate subjectivity, the social and cultural context in which we are situated, and temporality in psychotherapy. In responding to the papers, it is argued that psychoanalysis perhaps never was a 'romantic' endeavour, recognising as it does the fantasies and fictions involved in the idea of unconditional, and everlasting love. Rather, it recognises the role of being able to tolerate love and hatred in the experience of intimate relationships, whatever its forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reviews all articles on relationship, couples, and marriage psychotherapy and counseling published in the Transactional Analysis Journal (TAJ) between 1970 and 2021 to determine whether transactional analysis has a substantive model of relationship psychotherapy. He synthesizes the content in search of a coherent, integrated, systematic approach to this practice and to determine whether it is informed by contemporary theory and practice. Since the 1970s, the publication in the TAJ of papers on relationship psychotherapy has steeply declined as the broader relationship psychotherapy field has become enlivened. Discussion focuses on the significant work needed to develop this area of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present our development of a previously articulated approach to counselling education of transformational learning through a relational dynamic approach (Macaskie et al., 2013). We replace the idea of integration with a values-based approach and supplement the notion of transformational relational learning with a not-knowing attitude. This perspective on education and learning in counselling parallels the attitude within psychotherapy that we teach our students. We argue that this unites relational approaches to learning and psychotherapy across modalities and offers a trans-theoretical approach that could explain the common factors research in psychotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]