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This article explores the concept of gender expansiveness. This term refers to a person's self-identifying as gender fluid, genderqueer, transgender, non-binary, gender diverse, or gender nonconforming. Young people, including older children and adolescents, increasingly are experimenting with crossing gender lines. This trend can be understood as a sociocultural process for humanizing more terrifying archetypal forms of gender diversity. Using Henderson's (1988) concept of the cultural unconscious, the author posits that current social developments among youth are attempting to bring gender expansiveness more into collective consciousness. This issue has occasioned a strong counterreaction with panicked appeals to upholding traditional gender norms and needing restrictions on gender-affirming care. Examples from myth, literature and clinical practice help to contextualize the intense emotions aroused by gender diversity. A case example shows how gender fantasies are worked through within an empathic analytic relationship. The author makes an appeal for updating and humanizing older psychological theories that have relied heavily on splits, polarities, and oppositions, all of which are more characteristic of a 20 th century way of thinking about the psyche. A potential approach to incorporate gender expansiveness is through a model of the psyche as a mosaic., (© 2024 The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

Analysts and psychotherapists are beginning to have more thorough and probing discussions about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their work. Shifting to online teletherapy has been necessary due to the public health measures put in place to curtail the spread of the virus. Much of the existing literature addresses how using online platforms for teletherapy works for adults. This paper instead looks at its effects on working with children and adolescents. A contrast between Winnicott's notion of holding and Bion's concept of container-contained is reviewed through a summary of a paper by Ogden. This author finds that holding might be more applicable to online work during a pandemic when the collective relationship to time and its usual parameters is severely upended. Containing could be more arduous and challenging online due to the lack of embodied presence to communicate and detect tiny nonverbal cues. A short questionnaire affirms that child analysts and psychotherapists have struggled with dimensions of online work that are particular to the developmental levels of their patients. Further, teletherapy may often not be a good fit for someone with learning differences., (© 2022 The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

COVID-19 has upended the way analysts and psychotherapists practice. Many use the phone for their sessions, many are using video platforms, and many use a combination of the two. Work with adolescents is very challenging in this new modality because of the loss of in-person connection and immediate non-verbal cues. The public health restrictions put in place to manage COVID-19 spread are at odds with the adolescent tasks of adventuring, experimenting and gaining new experiences. In addition, increased anxieties about infection, contamination and invasion are often manifest and adolescents can regress in the face of them. Using seminal ideas from Bion, this article looks at two process examples from adolescent boys who struggled with parts of themselves that felt disturbing and unacceptable. The author discusses the clinical exchanges in detail and offers ideas about the difficulty of creating psychic space when working virtually., (© 2021, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

Boys and young men more frequently live out aspects of their psychic and social alienation online. This paper explores some of the risks and dangers that can arise from retreats into the two-dimensional world of cyberspace. It focuses more specifically on videogaming called MOBA, multi-player online battle arena games, in which players point and shoot at others. A case example emphasizes the clinical problems emerging from violent fantasies that seek a false form of containment in cyberspace. Themes of destructive fantasizing are further amplified through images of apocalypse, which are often prevalent in combat arena videogames. Textual sources from the Book of Revelation offer possible understanding for various elements of destructiveness as it appears in vulnerable male psyches. Therapeutic contact that combines a relational, containing approach and a broadly spiritual and soulful perspective can provide a path to healing such violent splits within the psyches of boys and young men., (© 2020, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

Despite the damaging effects of shoplifting on individuals, the current literature offers little guidance for changing shoplifting behavior. One limitation in this area of research has been the failure to use empirically and theoretically sound methodologies to identify individuals' diverse characteristics and motivations. The present study addressed these limitations by developing an empirically and theoretically supported typology of the varied individuals who shoplift. Participants included 202 community individuals who reported repeated shoplifting and provided information about their shoplifting behavior, motivations, mental health, ethical attitudes, personal histories, and life circumstances. Cluster analyses revealed that the sample could be divided into six discrete groups. These clusters comprise a typology of shoplifting, including Loss-Reactive (28% of the sample), Impulsive (20%), Depressed (18%), Hobbyist (18%), Addictive-Compulsive (9%), and Economically Disadvantaged (7%) types. Each type comprises a unique pattern of shoplifting with unique needs. This research establishes a promising foundation for treating the diverse individuals who shoplift.

In this second article about work at a refugee centre for unaccompanied minors in Berlin, the author discusses his encounter with Syrian and Afghani adolescents who were enrolled in the program. Issues around adaptation to a new culture are explored with attention to the dynamics of conformity and marginalization. The questions of what happens to adolescent refugees separated from their families, and how their identity formation is shaped by this burden is explored in relation to the author's meeting with a Syrian adolescent living in Berlin. To illustrate the long reach of a missing father who has been left behind, characters from Virgil's Aeneid are discussed to amplify heroic and spiritual aspects within father-son relationships. The interplay between needing help and allowing for resilience is explored as an important aspect of refugees' transitions, while also considering variables such as dependence and independence, foreign and familiar, being with or without family, and adjusting to the present and/whilst relating to the past; tensions between these alternatives can create various psychosocial challenges for adolescent refugees., (© 2019, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

Analysts are increasingly grappling with making space for the discussion of turbulent and disturbing current events in their practices. This social disorder raises questions about the role of social activism and advocacy for groups suffering discrimination, persecution, violence, and displacement. Jung too commented on the immediacy of political happenings that show up in our practices with 'violence'. The author discusses an organizational consultation he did in Berlin in 2017 to consult for an NGO that handles placements for unaccompanied minors who are refugees. Such consultation can employ analytic ideas and concepts to the benefit of the organization and its staff. This process, though, requires some translation of these ideas so as not to burden consultees with theoretical terminology with which they may have little or no familiarity. The role of vicarious trauma is discussed, including how it is passed along, and its implications for frontline helpers are considered. Developmental aspects of adolescence figured prominently in the consultation. This is the first of two papers addressing this topic; the second will focus on interactions that the author had with young refugees., (© 2018, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

This article explores the intense psychological effects of compulsive Internet use, which has become increasingly common among adolescent boys and young men. Two cases are presented and discussed to illustrate some of the psychic distortions around thinking and feeling, as these occurred in the analysis of a mid-adolescent boy and of another patient in later adolescence. A kind of narcissistic omnipotence grounded in magical thinking appeared to take root in their minds, and it led to an avoidant pattern in relationships because of such strong wishes for both distance and control. A short review of the conceptual origins of magical thinking underscores its continued relevance because so many now engage with the Internet. In addition, Anzieu's idea of the 'skin ego' is applied to the clinical case material to provide a theoretical framework for the developmental challenges that can appear in adolescent boys who seek to use the Internet as a form of psychic container. Emerging problems that immersion in the Internet might bring into our practices, for example the depleting effects of massive projective identification, are considered and discussed, along with the obvious ways in which using the Internet can be beneficial for connecting with others, for creating new platforms of expression, and for education., (© 2015, The Society of Analytical Psychology.)

This article highlights the clinical progress of three long-term psychotherapy groups for children with pervasive developmental disorders. Unique aspects of working with such children are addressed as well as their movement through the phases of group development. Clinical observations suggested that these groups did in fact pass through observable phases of cohesion, differentiation, and intimacy. Further, these children demonstrated noticeable social development both inside and outside the groups. They identified strongly with their groups, and after the settling-in period, there was remarkably little resistance to participation, especially given the children's tendencies for social avoidance. Vignettes are provided to illustrate both group developmental phases and noteworthy psychological experiences of the clinical process with children who have been diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorders.

Glutathione S-transferase activity has been measured in erythrocytes from 101 subjects. Specific activity in the female subjects was significantly greater than that in the males, but there was no relationship in either sex between enzyme activity and age or between enzyme activity and the most common erythrocyte antigens. Separation of erythrocytes by age using isopycnic centrifugation showed that enzyme activity was constant during the life of the cell.