Psychodynamic Point Of View Research Articles

Psychodynamic Concepts in Sport Psychology: Comment on Strean and Strean (1998)

Many athletes, during the course of their careers as competitors, experience performance impairment caused by psychological factors. At such times, it is important that sport psychology consultants understand these issues in order to help athletes deal with them more effectively. Psychodynamic theory is one approach that can provide a basis for obtaining this knowledge. Previous articles on this subject have addressed individual case histories and treatment of psychopathology in athletes, or the benefits of a psychodynamic perspective in understanding behavior in sport, or described particular sports from a psychodynamic viewpoint (Apitsch, 1995; Begel, 1992; Beisser, 1967; Hanna, 1993; Perry & Sacks, 1981; Sachs & Buffone, 1984; Sacks, 1980, 1990). None of these articles, however, addressed how sport psychology consultants who are not clinically trained can use psychodynamic concepts to help athletes perform better. The article by Strean and Strean (1998) in this issue, in addressing this point, opens an important dialogue.

Suicide in the Bible from the current psychodynamic viewpoint. "There Saul took a sword and fell upon it"

After a short introduction to psychoanalytical interpretation of literature in general and in the Bible, the stories of Samson and King Saul are examined on the basis of modern psychoanalytical aspects of suicidology (narcissistic theory, object relation theory, self psychology). Samson's beginning is hallmarked by the uncertainty of his parents, their megalomanic fantasies which are projected on the child. His relationships are characterized by violent emotions, intensive conflicts on intimacy and distance and also raging anger at insults and privation. In his suicide he fuses himself with the highly ambivalent primary object and destroys it at the same time he destroys himself. People with narcissistic personality are considered to be extremely suicidal especially in combination with the destructive potency of narcissistic anger.

Anger: Don't Express it and Don't Repress it

Although the expression of anger has been considered useful in many forms of therapy, it has been looked at mainly from the psychodynamic point of view. This article suggests that the expression of...

The Psychodynamic Viewpoint Is Alive and Well!

The Psychodynamic Viewpoint Is Alive and Well!

Music Therapy and Elective Mutism: A Case Discussion

This paper describes individual music therapy sessions with a 20-year-old man with specific communication difficulties manifested as inappropriate behaviour and elective mutism in his daily life. It shows how music therapy was a particularly relevant treatment in the context of the Unit where he was being helped. It illustrates firstly how aspects of play can be embraced in the therapeutic relationship, and secondly how problems can be worked through in the experience of both musical and non-musical interaction. The therapist uses a psychodynamic viewpoint in her understanding and interpretation of the sessions.

Essay on the diagnosis and nature of paraphilia

Increasing clinical experience has allowed the formulation of three psychodynamic viewpoints about the nature of the paraphilic disorder. Paraphilia is a disorder of sexual identity development, often solely of the intention component, that has three characteristics: a long-standing, highly arousing, unusual erotic preoccupation; a pressure to act upon the erotic fantasy; sexual dysfunction with a partner during conventional sexual behavior. Paraphilia is also a disorder of self-regulation characterized by a considerable gap between personal aspirations and behaviors. Finally, paraphilia is a dramatic impairment in the capacity to love. Two rarely recognized issues complicate the nosology of paraphilia: Many related sexual problems are often confused with paraphilia, and some paraphilias manifest themselves as variations in gender identity and object choice. The defensive functions of paraphilia are discussed and common terms used in conjunction with paraphilia are redefined.

Models of Disease and the Diagnosis of Schizophrenia

DSM-III criteria for schizophrenia represent a significant advance in diagnostic reliability and relevance to course and treatment outcome. However, the underlying, predominantly biomedical model, if exclusively applied, encourages the making of more malignant diagnoses and in particular the over-diagnosing of schizophrenia. This occurs by virtue of an associated declining interest in the content and context of symptoms, a disavowal of "psychology" and a failure of empathy. A psychodynamic viewpoint can help to redress the diagnostic imbalance that the use of the biomedical model can engender.

Suicid blant innlagte psykiatriske pasienter Betydningen av tap, avvisning og krenkelse belyst ved klinisk materiale

Alnaes R. Suicide among psychiatric inpatients. The importance of loss, rejection and injury.The number of suicides is increasing in psychiatric wards. Twenty-one suicides in hospital during the years 1959-88 are analysed. Explanations for the rise in suicide rate are discussed: increased admittance of patients with more severe psychopathology, rise in circulation of patients, increased turnover of personnel, side effects of milieu therapy, and a liberal open-door policy. Case histories are presented for illustration of the material. Implications of the study for preventing suicides are presented. Priority should be given to a better prediction of a high risk of suicide from a psychodynamic point of view, especially by considering rejection, loss, separation, and conflicts generating suicidal processes. The importance of regression phenomena in the patients and countertransference problems of the ward personnel preceding the suicide are underlined. The documented increase in more severe psychopathology amo...

Psychodynamic Factors in the Development of Drug Dependence

In this article we have brought to bear on the complex problem of substance dependency the psychodynamic perspective: a model that views the problem from the inner experience and psychological structure of the individual drug user. Chronic drug dependence has been associated with a range of personality styles and psychopathologic conditions but most frequently with character disorder and vulnerability to depression. Regardless of specific symptoms or personality styles, certain characterologic features are repeatedly observed to characterize substance-dependent individuals. These include problems in affect management, narcissism, object relations, judgment, and self-care. These developmentally and structurally determined problems generally predispose individuals to drug dependence because they are the basis of the distresses that are relieved by drug-taking; they specifically predispose to drug dependence because, in various ways, the taking of drugs and the experience of their effects are syntonic with existing modes of defense, adaptation, and self-concept. The actual vulnerability to substance dependency can vary considerably both between individuals and for the same individual at different times. For many, a necessary precipitating event involves a severe crisis in which usual adaptive capacities are diminished and narcissistic vulnerability is intense. Once drug taking is initiated in a susceptible state and the user has experienced adaptive benefit from the experience, a variety of other processes are set in motion that often lead to the state of dependency. These processes include both regressive effects that can exacerbate the original character problem and progressive effects that promote stable functioning. In both cases, however, this may interfere with further maturation of character, particularly when onset of use occurs in adolescence. Dependency involves the gradual incorporation of the drug effects and their experienced need into the defensive structure building activity of the ego itself. Undoing a dependency involves dealing with the unconscious and conscious components of this outcome. The user must be able to relinquish behaviors and drug effects that have come to be experienced as a valued (even if also hated) part of the self-capacity to function, cope, and be comforted in distress.

Paranoid-hallucinatory Functional Psychoses in Later Middle Age

The findings presented here are based on a broader study,1 in which the etiology of functional psychoses in individuals of middle age was investigated from a social-psychiatric and psychodynamic point of view. The purpose of the present paper is to draw comparisons between paranoid-hallucinatory and affective psychoses of later middle age and between paranoid-hallucinatory patients and the general population of the same age.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Assessing suicide risk from a psychodynamic point of view. D. H. Buie & J. T. MaltsbergerL. F. Gram, E. Usdin, S. G. Dahl, P. Kragh‐Sørensen, F. Sjøqvist & P. L. Morselli (eds.)

Symposium on sexual dysfunction. The psychoanalytical approach.

Modern psychodynamic formulations concerning the sexual dysfunctions stem directly from Freud's Three Essays on Sexuality (1905). Amplification and modification of psychoanalytical views since then have provided a further store of observation and clinical theory of personality development and the working of the unconscious mind, from which both behaviourally-, as well as psychoanalytically-orientated workers continue to draw. However, no single unified psychoanalytic theory of sexual dysfunction exists, nor should it at this stage of our understanding. Psychoanalysis continues to be the major source of psycho-dynamic principles in this field; there are three avenues down which progress is being made. The first, which forms the body of this contribution, is the application of psychoanalysis to the psychotherapeutic treatment of sexual dysfunctions. The second is the amalgamation of certain of the techniques and principles of psychoanalysis together with active behavioural practices based on the discoveries of Masters and Johnson and the behavioural therapists. [Singer (1974) in the USA; Robinson and Creed (1980) in the UK]. The third, no less interesting from a psychodynamic point of view is the way in which some modern behavioural learning theory psychologists are finding themselves facing psychodynamic complexities, such as transference, counter-transference, and a growing reliance on talking rather than manipulative procedures. Some behavioural sex-therapists see themselves as psychotherapists (Mackay, 1976). A knowledge of psychodynamics is therefore invaluable whatever one's final clinical approach.

職場不適応症について 受診状況調査，発症要因と治療を中心として

A survey of medical examinations has been made on occupational maladjustment syndrome (O.M.A.S.). We have examined and treated on 358 patients with O.M.A.S. during the past 10-15 years at two clinics; one was a company's clinic (this company has 15,000 employees) and the other was the clinic at the Dept. of Mental Health, Osaka Prefectural Institute of Public Health during the past 15 years. Discussions have been made on 150 patients whom we directly treated. Our 358 subjects having O.M.A.S. do not include those with secondary O.M.A. resulting from psychosis, depression, neurosis and physical impairment. From that reason, our subjects are categorized in a narrow sense, in a category which may be called as "adjustment disorder." The results are summarized as follows. 1. The patients with O.M.A.S. were found almost in males and most commonly found among patients in the twenties. 2. The average rate of patients with O.M.A.S. among all the patients who visited two clinics, was 4.1% at our clinic and 16.7% at the company's clinic. 3. At our clinic, the number of patients with O.M.A.S. was followed by the number of those with neurosis, schizophrenia and manic-depressive psychotic zone. This trend was also the same at the company's clinic. 4. As the cause of O.M.A.S., we found the following occupational factors; firstly, transposition by selective promotion, secondly, complication of job-quality, and thirdly, promotion to middle management position. As to personal factors, i.e. as to characteristic individual personality we found mostly rigid and serious trait, next immaturity and egotism, and timidity and nervousness. 5. The relation between the occupational and individual factors was examined from the psychodynamic point of view. From the result, O.M.A.S. was classified into 5 groups which consisted of the core group, dropout group, special job maladjustment group, transient reaction group and others. 6. In conclusion of the above mentioned data, the authors emphasize that it is important to explain and advise by the therapists not only for patients and their families, but also for their colleagues or superiors in their working place.

Book Review: Schizophrenic Disorders: Theory and Treatment from a Psychodynamic Point of View

Book Review: Schizophrenic Disorders: Theory and Treatment from a Psychodynamic Point of View

Political psychiatry: a post-Watergate perspective or the revolution of falling expectations.

The social contract is a concept equally vital to philosophy and psychology in terms more relevant to this presentation, to politics and psychiatry. From the Hobbesian point of view, the contract has to do with the rights and responsibilities of different components and classes of society vis á vis one another. From the psychodynamic point of view, the social contract has to do with the way individuals relate to each other. Common to both perspectives is the implicit recognition that certain rules will be followed and that penalties will ensue when they are not, or, at the very least, that the prospect of penality will serve as a deterrent. These two notions of social contract converge in the actual regulation of our individual and collective behavior. Governance is impossible without trust in either the rules (more commonly known as the law, or the rule of law) or the people who administer them, whether parent, judge, or senator. Laws that are accepted and a corresponding "care that those laws are failfully executed" both are necessary to a good and just society. Perhaps I can demonstrate these concepts by paraphrasing the nobel Prize winning Japanese novelist who used as a title of his prize winning novel, The Sound of the Mountain. The tearing of the social fabric is the sound of loss of trust in our government, governors, and governance. If that trust is lost, it is but a step to loss of faith in self. For me, the test of these envolving concepts is their usefulness in predicting or at least in coping with the near future. To re-establish trust is our major task. My view may be too narrow and parochial, but I think it is more than coincidental that two of the groups under severest attack as untrustworthy are politicians and psychiatrists. The response of these two groups have some dramatic and meaningful similarities. In politics or, at least, in campaign rhetoric we are seeing fewer promises and more candor; mor emphasis on truthfulness, personal integrity, and character and fewer offers to solve difficult problems. In psychiatry, and somewhat in psychology and the other behavioral and social sciences, we see a demand to reduce the role of scope of the profession, particularly in dealing with "social issues," such as poverty and racism, which commentators and critics consider to be outside the proper sphere of competence and propriety. As a political psychiatrist, I am deeply concerned. In order to avoid the pitfalls of over-promising, we are overreacting; we are movinginto a trap that combines anti-intellectualism and anti-idealism. It can be summarized briefly in what I would call "the revolution of falling expectations." This is wrong. I protest. At the risk of being accused of hubris and hutzpah, I feel that nothing less than the best intellectual capacities and abilities and the deepest and widest experience are needed to deal with our problems in both politics and psychiatry...

The Treatment of a Child Foot Fetishist

The history of a childhood foot fetishist is discussed from a developmental, psychodynamic, and therapeutic point of view. Therapy revealed that the symptom, while initially created in response to parental pathology, later led to specific defense mechanisms which were utilized to avoid developmental tasks, resolve ambivalence, and maintain body integrity.

Psychopathologic Problems in Twins During Childhood

Some psychopathologic problems occurring during childhood in twins are discussed from the point of view of mental health. On the basis of case history of twins affected by neurologic or psychiatric disorders some typical situations have been examined: (1) psychopathologic problems arising from perinatal death of the cotwin; (2) psychopathologic problems arising from the death of the cotwin during late childhood; (3) psychopathologic problems arising in the pair from organic or neuropsychaitric event in one of the twins; (4) psychopathologic problems of the twins due to disorders of personal identity and the interaction between the twins. The cases are analyzed from a psychodynamic point of view, in relation to the development of personality in the twins, and from a psychosocial point of view, in relation to the cultural stereotype of the twins during the socialization process and in the context of parental dynamics.

Aging: Downward, upward, or forward?

Life views are dominated by an iconic illusion that forces the span of life into a low-high-low sequence of stages. Aging is seen as loss, decline, a downhill course. But while there are losses in aging, there are also gains, and empirical observations show that many persons enjoy getting older. From a psychodynamic viewpoint the losses in aging, though painful, are made bearable by considerable gains that afford new pleasures. Aging's gains and losses are described, leading to the conclusion that the life course is neither upward nor downward, but a forward movement full of new discoveries.

Epistemological perspectives of physical disease from the psychodynamic point of view.

Epistemological perspectives of physical disease from the psychodynamic point of view. C B BahnsonCopyRight https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.64.11.1034 Published Online: October 07, 2011

Drama and psychiatry: some insights of Euripides.

The author examines some of the beliefs about human behaviour displayed in the plays of Euripides, and compares and contrasts them with the views of modern psychiatrists, particularly adherents of the psychodynamic and neo-organic viewpoints. He points out that Euripides comes close to the neo-organic position, in the belief that many processes, while not part of the mind, can act upon it to determine resultant behaviour.