Psychoanalytic Principles Research Articles

The Cassel Hospital, London

This paper is an account of the principles and practices of treatment offered at the Cassel Hospital, London, with a particular focus on the Inpatient Families Unit. The Cassel Hospital is an internationally renowned therapeutic community, the operation of which is based on psychoanalytic principles and which has operated within the British National Health Service for nearly 50 years. An account of the historical development of the hospital is given as well as a description of its structure and function. The following three innovative structures are elaborated: a complex network within which patients can develop, Cassel-style nursing care, and nurse-therapist supervision. Theoretical underpinnings are outlined, which together with two case studies facilitate an appreciation of the capacity of the therapeutic network to foster the successful treatment of a range of severely disordered individuals and families. Such treatment may approach a level perhaps otherwise unattainable and which is widely applicable in the public hospital and clinic settings in Australia.

Nonsexual exploitation of patients--an ethical perspective.

These are some instances of nonsexual exploitation that I have become aware of over the past several years. Some of them have resulted in complaints to various ethics committees, but most have not. Many colleagues are unaware that such behavior is in any way unethical. As far as analytic principles are concerned, many of these problems can be rationalized or the psychoanalytic theory can be modified to fit the Procrustean bed of the analyst's desire. Yet when you get down to it, the bulk of the Principle of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially for Psychiatrists is derived from a few elements of the Hippocratic principles and a large chunk of psychoanalysis. Understanding what the nature of the therapeutic relationship is and applying some basic psychoanalytic principles will result in one's own code of conduct that will not be appreciably different from that suggested by the Principles of Medical Ethics. If we as psychoanalysts will attend to these psychoanalytic points of view, there will be little need to consult the book.

Psychoanalysis and the Maltreatment of Children

This essay presents some of the ideas derived from 30 years of observing and treating abused children and those who abuse them. Although most of these patients have not been in what could be called classical analysis, psychoanalytic principles have been crucially important in understanding their behavior and psychodynamics. I also believe that the study of their life histories can often enhance and sometimes broaden many of our psychoanalytic concepts, especially of ego and superego development and expression.

Freudian Principles in Everyday Life

An exercise helps students appreciate the extent of Sigmund Freud's influence on modern American culture. Students indicate their agreement or disagreement with 15 statements reflecting the traditional Freudian perspective. Statements and students' responses are the catalyst for a discussion of psychoanalytic principles and Freudian influence. One graduate and three undergraduate introductory psychology classes found the exercise to be thought provoking, helpful, and useful in making them realize Freud's influence on American culture.

Maturity of personality and family communication

The psychodynamic and the communication/systemic perspectives are commonly considered as two entirely different approaches to psychopathology. The current study is an effort to bridge these opposing perspectives empirically. Maturity of personality, measured according to psychoanalytic principles by the Consensus Couples Rorschach, and relationship control in family communication, as measured by a new coding system (RCC) in an observational study, were related. The results indicate that low level of maturity is associated with egocentric and self-disqualifying communication in situations of conflict, but not in situations involving no or moderate conflict. Additionally, mature wives were prone to react to situations involving perceptual conflict by communicating dominantly, whereas immature wives communicated in more submissive ways. Reversely, the more mature the husbands were, the more they displayed a submissive style of communicating when in conflict.

A humanistic critique of psychoanalytic termination.

Abstract In psychoanalytic literature, it is generally acknowledged that long‐term psychoanalyses may well be accompanied with troublesome termination problems. Our purpose is to examine this issue from one humanistic perspective. Such a critique allows us to conclude that there are identifiable psychoanalytic principles and methods that play a large hand in actively constructing troublesome termination problems. Proposals are given to modify these principles and methods to enable the ending of long‐term psychoanalyses without such troublesome termination problems.

Toward generic principles of treating parents and children: Integrating psychotherapy with the school-aged child and early family intervention.

Generic principles governing the outcome and process of the treatment of children and their families can be generated from both research on the psychotherapy of school-aged children and early family intervention. Evidence indicates that the amenability of the child or parent to treatment and the comprehensiveness, duration, and intensity of the helping process are significant parameters. Definition of significant early family intervention roles allows linkage to various therapeutic roles with school-aged children and forces the recognition that most treatment situations involve more roles than are officially recognized. This articulation of the profile of intervention roles among poverty level, first-time parents at risk for neglecting their infant drew on several bodies of theory: psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, social cognitive, and positive reinforcement principles, and advocacy and direct assistance as used in clinical social casework.

An English Freud?

SUMMARY This paper considers the cultural and academic climate in latenineteenth-century Victorian culture and compares it with that of Austria and the rest of Europe. In many ways London was more isolated, more peripheral than Vienna. There were foreign influences, certainly, but they were not strong enough at first to shift the materialist concepts of the mind which were so prominent at that time. It was the great neurologists such as Hughlings Jackson who dominated the scene, and in this they were influential on Freud himself, but the climate was essentially opposed to the thinking that allowed psychoanalysis to flourish in Europe. However, despite this, the great pioneers of psychoanalysis, especially Ernest Jones, as well as the psychoanalytic psychotherapists interested in applying psychoanalytic principles more widely, did gradually turn the tide of opinion. Not an English Freud, but many institutions and individuals that we can be quite proud of.

Guiding the unconscious: The process of poem selection for poetry therapy groups

The observations and ideas discussed in this paper were generated by poetry reading therapy group work with severely disturbed psychiatric patients. Conducted in a comprehensive aftercare program, this work was primarily for patients who have experienced frequent or multiple hospitalizations and whose illnesses have seriously impaired their overall functioning. Many are medicated schizophrenic persons who are concurrently involved in other treatment modalities, all of which are informed by psychoanalytic principles. In particular, this paper, addressed to clinicians already familiar with poetry therapy, has its focus on the critical task of selecting poems to provide patients with an opportunity for a positive and often profound therapeutic experience.

Concurrent Individual and Individual-In-A-Group Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

This paper's thesis is that concurrent individual-in-a-group and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy can be conducted in conformance with psychoanalytic principles of treatment as well as can individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy alone. American psychoanalysts have shown little interest in group psychotherapy, probably because of earlier criticism that transference is diluted by the greater reality of the therapist in group psychotherapy. This is a misconception extrapolated from the mirror model of dyadic analytic technique. The criticism was formulated during a period when that model was prominent and there was little awareness that the actual personal relationship between patient and analyst played an important facilitating role in the dyadic analytic process, including providing a basis for investiture of transference. Also, the criticism was based on one-session-per-week group psychotherapy, whereas concurrent individual-in-a-group and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy utilizes two group sessions plus one or two individual sessions per week, enabling a more intensive patient-therapist relationship. Concurrent group and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy constitutes a contribution to the widening scope of application of psychoanalytic treatment.

The Psychologist as Psychoanalyst: The Proper Study of Mankind

I am grateful and honoured—although I must also admit rather surprised—to have been invited to give this Annual Society Lecture. The surprise is allied to a feeling of admiration at your openmindedness because I must assume that I owe your invitation to my connection with the School of Psychotherapy at St. Vincent's Hospital, Elm Park and the formation that we try to give in that school is guided by psychoanalytic principles which some might see as alien to the eclectic spirit of scientific psychology. I would like today to talc about these guiding principles and the way in which they illuminate and challenge some of the current approaches to the theory and practice of psychology. But let me say at the outset that psychoanalysts in their turn should allow themselves to be challenged by the intelligence and rigour with which psychologists develop and test their theories, and perhaps even more by the spirit of commitment and care that characterises the day-to-day practice of many psychologists.

Robert Waelder and the application of psychoanalytic principles to social and political phenomena.

This presentation reveals a little-known area of Robert Waelder's work. As his literary executor, I have been privileged with access to his unpublished material, notes, and correspondence. And, of course, I am familiar with his mode of thinking. I wish to pass on some of this knowledge. What cannot be passed on, however, in some abstract intellectual way, are psychoanalytic principles themselves. Therefore, while this paper sheds light on a very particular aspect of Robert Waelder's work, it is also in some ways a cautionary tale, a plea that the reader understand what is behind the psychoanalytic point of view and its basic concepts--namely, clinical experience.

Orality and Latency of Volunteering to Serve as Experimental Subjects: A Replication

Comparison of Rorschach orality scores for undergraduate subjects who signed up to participate in psychology experiments during the first (n = 217) and second (n = 87) halves of the semester revealed that early participators report a significantly (p = .03) greater number of oral Rorschach responses (X = 3.765) than late participators (X = 3.218). This result confirms an earlier serendipitous finding (Masling, O'Neill, & Jayne, 1981) that volunteering to participate in required experiments is not a chance event and can, in fact, be predicted using methods derived from psychoanalytic theory. Our finding supports the utility of psychoanalytic principles in predicting important aspects of nonlaboratory behavior.

Psycho-analysis in the National Health Service General Hospital

SUMMARY The paper describes the author's experience of practising psychotherapy based on psycho-analytic principles in three National Health Service Hospitals. Each is associated with a Post-Graduate institute. The Royal Marsden Hospital associated with the Institute of Oncology specialises in the treatment and study of cancer in all its forms in all ages. The Hammersmith Hospital is the site of the Royal Post-Graduate Medical School and it has an Obstetric and Gynaecology Unit which is part of the Institute of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital is a more compact specialist hospital associated with and containing the Institute of Laryngology and Otology. In this paper instances are described where psychotherapy of Kleinian orientation has been helpful and has often been the only means of assisting patients by increasing their understanding and diminishing mental pain. The effects of introducing a psychotherapeutic rather than a psychiatric approach into the work of these departments is also described. The application of basic and fundamental analytic principles had a considerable advantage over the non-analytic psychological approach and was, in these circumstances, complementary to the one based on the medical/scientific model. This was particularly true of painful ‘terminal’ conditions. Liaison difficulties arise initially from the fact that medical and non-medical colleagues are commonly without experience of psychodynamic thinking and practice, and instead have many misconceptions about its nature and value. When the usefulness of the approach becomes evident to such colleagues prejudice gives way to understanding and co-operation. This has proved to be the most effective way of introducing analytically orientated psychotherapists and psycho-analytic thinking into the National Health Service, at the same time restoring to patients their dignity and supplying their needs as individuals for sensitive consideration and care.

Applications of self psychology to the problem of child abuse

This article examines the application of self psychology to the problem of child abuse. The understanding of child abuse has evolved and, through the application of psychoanalytic principles, has come to be viewed as a breakdown in the parent-child relationship. Self psychology provides a furthering of this understanding and suggests treatment modalities. The case illustration demonstrates the usefullness of self psychology in both understanding and treating abusive parents.

Discussion of the Paper by David A. Scola, M.D. on “The Hemispheric Specialization of the Human Brain and Its Application to Psychoanalytic Principles”

Dr. Scola proposes a bold and far-reaching synthesis of psychoanalytic theory, developmental neurobiology and neurophysiology of behavior. Freud found this task so frustrating in 1895 that he renounced neurology in favor of a purely psychologic approach (or so Freud claimed; Frank Sulloway sees it differently). Hypotheses that unconscious mental life is situated in the right cerebrum and that defense mechanisms are related to neuroanatomic connections are intriguing. The presentation does not include evidence which contravenes these theories. Sperry presented some evidence that the right hemisphere is self-aware and self-evaluative (I). One great problem in all cross disciplinary studies is the difference in terminology and definitions from various fields.

The Hemispheric Specialization of the Human Brain and Its Application to Psychoanalytic Principles

Volumes of research have been accumulated over the past decade concerning hemispheric specialization of the human brain. Likewise, over the past century, psychoanalysts have painstakingly unraveled through their clinical observation many of the mysteries of intrapsychic functions. Yet little has been written concerning attempts to integrate these seemingly divergent viewpoints.

Brief intervention with the mother of a congenitally damaged newborn infant: An application of psychoanalytic principles to infant psychiatry

Brief intervention with the mother of a congenitally damaged newborn infant: An application of psychoanalytic principles to infant psychiatry

Psychoanalytic teaching in medical education.

The author sent a questionnaire to directors of medical student education in psychiatry to determine the role of psychoanalytic concepts in medical education. Practically all of the 66 respondents indicated that psychodynamic theory had been incorporated into major required courses. More than half considered the concepts of defense mechanism countertransference, transference, and dynamic unconscious necessary to general education. The author concludes that psychoanalytic principles will continue to provide a unique view into illness behavior and the doctor-patient relationship.

Psychoanalytic principles in sex therapy.

We are concerned here with how psychoanalytic principles can be used in the treatment of sexual problems and dysfunctions. Three areas will be covered: (I) the meaning of the term psychoanalytic principles, (2) some of what goes on in sex therapy, and (3) how some psychoanalytic principles are used. The better we understand sex therapy, the more we will see how applicable psychoanalytic principles are in this form of treatment. Psychoanalytic principles are applied in the procedure of investigating and treating specific conscious and unconscious processes of human behavior and functioning. This procedure ultimately leads to self-realization and fulfillment. In the application of psychoanalytic principles, various techniques are used: free association, dream interpretation, analysis of doctor-patient transference and countertransference relationships, and the analysis of resistances, blockages, and resolution of intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts. These techniques make it possible to explore unconscious processes and motivations. They also enable us to define the characterological and personality traits that lead to the specific compulsive personalities of compliance, withdrawal, or expansiveness. Each of these types adopts various neurotic strategies in an attempt at finding a solution, and these strategies influence the individual's sexual life and behavior. For example, certain affective processes appear to have specific autonomous actions when they relate to sexual functioning. Thus intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts will affect sexual functioning, whether through the self-idealization process, self-despising, or any other compulsive attempts at solution. Psychosexual trends start from birth and are culturally influenced from then on. Generally, symptoms of neurotic conflict and anxiety and the specific type of character and personality structure (self-effacing, detached, expansive, arrogant, and so on) result in specific forms of sexual dysfunction, (impotence, premature ejaculation, preorgasmic problems, and the like). Guilt feelings and subsequent conflicts play a tremendous role in sexual dysfunctions and are of basic importance in sex therapy. By bringing into conscious awareness unconscious feelings and associ-