Search

Recognizing somatic countertransference reactions is an essential tool for the psychodynamic clinician. Although the analyst's bodily reactivity has been written about throughout the history of our field, contemporary neuroscience, multiple code theory, and nonlinear system dynamics provide scientific buttressing to understand embodied phenomena. Patients often speak with and about their bodies, and the clinician who pays attention to these communications, as well as those emanating from his or her own body, has an additional resource to help the patient. Elvin Semrad's classic but largely unremembered "tour of the body" is one tool that can assist clinicians in how to receive and process body reactions that may be unconsciously split off, consciously withheld, or felt dangerous or beguiling. Three examples are used to illustrate embodiment and somatic countertransference as important clinical guides. An argument is made that these concepts should be taught and integrated into psychodynamic curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact and complex nature of keeping secrets deserves greater scrutiny within psychoanalysis. While the capacity to keep a secret is a developmental achievement that furthers conscious choice and healthy boundary setting between self and others, an individual's need for privacy must be distinguished from untoward costs of collusion and concealment. Clinical case material shows that not all secrets are unconscious or multilayered, as assumed in most of the psychoanalytic literature. Nonetheless, in these cases deleterious effects to psyche and soma took root. These patients assumed that their secret was irreparably destructive to an essential object relationship; shame, guilt, narcissistic vulnerability, unconscious identification with an injured party, and developmental deficit were other factors found to undergird this mode of pathogenic dissembling. Two clinical examples also demonstrate that embodied countertransference reactions may herald the revelation of a secret in treatment that had been hidden, but in plain view. Secrets appear to exert their profound psychological and physical effects on patient and analyst by biological mechanisms that are as yet poorly understood but are readily observed in clinical practice. Psychoanalysts who keep in conscious awareness both the adaptive value and the potential costs of maintaining the confidences of others over the course of a career are better positioned to assist their patients and themselves in rendering essential self-care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artist Emily Carr1 A majority of paintings by Emily Carr are in the permanent collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Others may be viewed in the National Gallery of Ontario and the British Columbia Archives in Victoria, BC. They are also available as photographed reproductions on the web at vancouverartgallery.bc.ca.1(1871–1945) has attained iconic status in Canada and throughout the world for her prodigious output as a painter and writer of the Pacific Northwest. This article describes how the arrival of three “essential others” at pivotal moments in middle life helped lift Carr out of a serious, lifelong depression and nurtured and inspired her creative output. I propose that Carr’s productivity and psychological recovery were facilitated by sequential, cumulative input from these generative human contacts. The creative partnership formed between an artist and her muse has features akin to the patient/therapist dyad, ranging from sparking new and healthier adaptations, to reshaping the internal landscape via internalization, to facilitation and promotion of unique talent. This psychobiographical study of Emily Carr is a vehicle for clinicians to further contemplate elements imbedded in our daily work that give rise to greater resilience, spontaneous recovery from illness, and personal transformation in the lives of our patients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses five points that need to be considered when implementing the integrative treatment approach to improve clinical practices in treating eating disorders. It is important for clinicians to help patients face down their inner critic for them to appreciate their strengths. Clinicians should also listen for secrets and make patients expressible in treatment. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of addressing issues of loss and grief and mourning the eating disorder identity.

Discusses key factors which contribute to the occurrence of anxiety disorders in women. Medical issues; Epidemiological and diagnostic perspectives; Interactions between anxiety, work and the reproductive cycle; Role of trauma in the development of anxiety disorders; Influence of marriage and the family; Treatment of anxiety disorders.

Presents a case study involving a female patient who had remained unresponsive to traditional treatment interventions for anorexia nervosa and bulimic tendencies. Role of countertransference feelings in the psychotherapist to the treatment of eating disorders; Use of traditional psychodynamic principles with contemporary feminist thoughts in treating eating disorders.

Discusses the psychodynamic considerations in the diagnosis and treatment of social phobia. Failure to recognize and treat the disorder; Countertransference reactions to patients as interfering with the recognition and treatment of social phobia; Psychodynamic literature's neglect of the topic of social phobia; Psychodynamic issues explored.

Explores a variety of theoretical principles that aid understanding of the eating disorders and inform treatment interventions. Therapeutic interventions; Countertransference difficulties.

Offers a psychodynamic perspective on the link between eating disorders and dissociative phenomena and proposes that they occur along a continuum. Role of trauma and deprivation; Synchronicity of symptom overlap; Diagnoses; Hypnotherapy; More.