Psychoanalytic Technique Research Articles

Special Report: How to Work With Patients Using Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapies

Special Report: How to Work With Patients Using Problem-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapies

When patients probe the analyst: Manifestations of patient testing and its complexity – An in-depth exploration of case examples of extant research

Patients probe the analyst with the goal of challenging pathogenic adaptations to early experiences. As the core concept of control mastery theory (CMT), testing is contextualized within psychoanalytic theory. The current work examines 29 articles illustrating therapies performed or analyzed using the CMT approach for the occurrence of testing, which takes place through interaction, self-presentation, narratives, or the use of the setting. The various manifestations of testing and their potential meanings are described. An in-depth analysis of selected testing examples is performed to compare tests within patients and across studies. The results show that patients differ in their testing strategies, shift testing strategy during the process of treatment, combine tests, and test multiple conflictual themes within a single test. Therefore, the importance of applying a case-specific approach, based on a thorough understanding of a patient, becomes evident. Recommendations concerning psychoanalytic technique, including the role of interpretation, as illustrated in case vignettes, are introduced.

The Freud-Ferenczi dialogue after the formulation of the Second Topic.

The author proposes to examine the scientific dialogue established by Freud and Ferenczi between 1920 and 1933 after Freud's formulation of the Second Topic, the Pleasure Principle. It is very informative to explore the closeness of some formulations of Freud with the more important clinical and metapsychological intuitions of Ferenczi. The role of repetition, the value of affects, the second theory of anxiety, the elasticity of the psychoanalytical technique and the problem of traumatism are some of aspects developed in this paper.

The Prophetic Voice of a War-traumatized Poet: Representation of Trauma in the Early Poetry of Robert Lowell

This paper aims to show how Robert Lowell’s first volumes Land of Unlikeness and Lord Weary’s Castle can be examined from a trauma conceptual point of view. It attempts to explore Lowell’s representation of his traumatic experiences in his early poetry by drawing heavily on Freud’s and Cathy Caruth’s theorizations of trauma. More specifically, the paper attempts to illustrate how Lowell’s mode of representing his traumatic experience of World War II is based on witnessing and documenting the war events and how he endeavors to use this mode of representation as a strategy for transcending his war trauma. In his first two volumes, Lowell identifies with the war sufferers and becomes so much imbued with their trauma that he starts to experience a secondary trauma. However, he attempts to survive his trauma by using two alternative strategies which conform to specific psychoanalytic techniques of healing trauma. He achieves this through his spiritual resignation and alternatively through his description of the traumatic scenes of World War II in order to reassure himself that these war scenes are only a matter of the past. Keywords: War poetry; Robert Lowell; Land of Unlikeness; Lord Weary’s Castle; trauma; Freud; Cathy

Bringing Reflective Functioning to the Community: Aspects of psychotherapy process in the Group Attachment Based Intervention

ABSTRACT This special section dedicated to papers concerned with change processes in psychodynamic child and adolescent psychotherapy poses a set of interesting questions. What makes an intervention psychodynamic? How do we measure psychotherapy process? How can we bring psychodynamically-oriented treatment to a wider community, especially those that would not otherwise have access? These questions highlight the rich dialogue that can take place when we draw on psychoanalytic constructs and techniques to inform clinically relevant research, and then extrapolate these, to bring treatment to where they are desperately needed.

Игры бессознательного (по страницам переводов В.В. Старовойтова)

In recent years, several significant translations have been published by Vladimir Vasilyevich Starovoitov, which undoubtedly expand the ideas of Russian specialists about classical psychoanalysis, its criticism and the subsequent development of Freudian ideas. The article analyzes the works of John D. Sutherland, Ronald W.F. Fairbairn, Sandor Ferenczi and Benjamin Kilborne. An idea is given about the dynamically complex and contradictory process of the formation of psychoanalytic schools and individual teachings. The problems of the theory of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic technique are considered, the issues of applied and clinical psychoanalysis, the development of personality and the emotional world of a person are discussed.

‘The Unconscious was Another Word for Inspiration’: Adam Phillips on Marion Milner

‘The Unconscious was Another Word for Inspiration’: Adam Phillips on Marion Milner

Extensions of Psychoanalytic Technique: The Mutual Influences of Standard Psychoanalysis and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy.

The author describes the differences between standard psychoanalysis and transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) and reviews particular difficulties that psychodynamically trained clinicians have in learning TFP. In delineating differences between standard psychoanalysis and TFP, the author discusses mutual influences between standard psychoanalytic techniques and techniques of TFP. TFP is an extension and modification of standard psychoanalysis, but with quantitative modifications geared to the treatment of the most severe segment of personality disorders that tend not to be treatable by standard analysis. TFP includes some features that are directly facilitated by psychoanalytic education, such as the importance of free association and the organization of interpretations in terms of the analysis of defense, motivation, and impulse. On the other hand, TFP provides new strategies, enhancing standard psychoanalytic treatment, when it modifies technical neutrality under certain circumstances, allows for the analysis of "incompatible realities," and accelerates interventions under conditions of severe acting out when technical neutrality is not possible to maintain. The author demonstrates the advantages of systematic training in TFP within psychoanalytic institutes as a true enrichment of technical training. He proposes that psychoanalysis as a profession consists of a broad spectrum of treatment approaches based upon the combined utilization of psychoanalytic techniques, with specific modifications to be organized in specific forms of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. TFP may be the closest modification to standard psychoanalysis proper and is clearly defined and manualized. This has permitted empirical research that has already demonstrated the effectiveness of TFP.

EL LUGAR DE LOS HONORARIOS PROFESIONALES EN EL ENCUADRE PSICOANALÍTICO: VIGENCIA Y DESAFÍOS

This article reflects on the changes and modifications that the psychoanalytic technique has been undergoing. It reflects on one aspect of the setting in particular – fees. We comment briefly on the difficulties encountered when transmitting the technique, and the adjustments and flexibility necessary to adapt it to new realities. We currently think of the setting as something we build in each clinical situation tailored to the patient-therapist bond. We take as an example one of its aspects, as well as the importance of attending to situations where there is a break in the setting.

Being safe and being brave: new thoughts on trauma, and adaptations to technique

This paper outlines ways in which more traditional psychoanalytic technique has been challenged by new findings about trauma and the optimal ways in which it can be worked with. In particular it outlines how therapists need to become much more knowledgeable about the risks of retriggering PTSD symptoms, and about dissociative symptomatology. In addition, in some cases it is suggested that psychoanalytic therapists might become braver in helping victims of trauma to feel anger about what happened to them, and that often for optimal recovery anger and rage needs to precede remorse, reparation and a bearing of depressive anxieties

Tavistock Centenary: the Tavistock Autism service over four decades

An event held in December 2020 explored the rich clinical work and innovative thinking around Autism Spectrum Condition at the Tavistock over the past four decades. Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists Sue Reid and Anne Alvarez describe their early groundbreaking work within the Tavistock Autism Team and Workshop. This work yielded the fascinating clinical observations that there were some children with the condition who made significant gains in therapy, leading to major developments in psychoanalytic techniques for this group. Since then, there has been a continuing influence of psychoanalytical, systemic perspectives on the Tavistock approach to Autism. It is an approach which at the same time is firmly rooted in the research around Autism’s neurodevelopmental basis. Nechama Polak, Clinical Psychologist, provides an account of how the current work of the team has increasingly focused on supporting young adults with the condition, and their parents, whilst Myooran Canagaratnam, Consultant Psychiatrist, describes the Tavistock approach to diagnostic assessment.

Clinical Applications of Neuropsychoanalysis: Hypotheses Toward an Integrative Model.

Neuropsychoanalysis has been established as a field based on the dialog between psychoanalysis and the neurosciences. Freud was a neurologist for 20 years and used the neuroscientific knowledge of his time as the foundation of his metapsychology. Psychoanalysis has predominantly relied on its own method to develop techniques for the different psychoanalytic treatments. It rarely uses contributions from fields outside psychoanalysis that could enrich its understanding of the mind. Neuropsychoanalysis has informed and revised several topics in psychoanalysis, for example consciousness and the unconscious, dreams, and affect amongst many others. Clear clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis can be appreciated in the work with neurological patients. However, a constant question from clinicians is whether neuropsychoanalytic findings can contribute to psychoanalytic treatments with non-neurological patients. This paper explores clinical applications of neuropsychoanalysis mainly based on affective neuroscience to propose an analysis of emotions that may contribute to the gradual development of a neuropsychoanalytically informed psychotherapy. The task of integrating neuroscientific knowledge into psychoanalytic technique is still considered a challenge of accentuated complexity, but it is at the same time a necessary and promising endeavor that aims at improving the quality of the treatments available for human suffering and psychopathology.

The possibilities of art therapy as one of integrative methods in therapeutic pedagogy

Taking into account the integrative nature of therapeutic pedagogy, the question of using, choosing and systematizing its methods is still debatable. The methodological toolkit of the therapeutic pedagogy and its classification began to take shape in the twentieth century thanks to the integrative system of V.P. Kashchenko's methods, which includes a set of therapeutic, rehabilitation, psychoanalytical techniques. The results and scientific novelty of the research are that the social significance and expediency of attracting and using varieties of art therapeutic techniques in medical pedagogy for the purpose of harmonious development, recovery and rehabilitation of children were determined. The essence and therapeutic and pedagogical resources of the variety of art therapy methods aimed at integrating and reintegrating a child's personality, developing his or her emotional and moral potential, designing the expected changes in his or her own identity, and predicting humane behavioral patterns with respect to the surrounding authenticity were considered.

Encapsulated body engrams and somatic narration – Integrating body memory into psychoanalytic technique

ABSTRACT Beginning with the observation that a good integration of soma and psyche is often missing in our work with severely disturbed analysands, two concepts are discussed that focus constellations of bodily encoded unconscious material, which needs a specific form of working-through. The concept of encapsulated body engrams referring to defence structures revolving around the inhibition or disorganization of an affective bodily impulse is outlined. The imbalance arising this way is perceived as a foreign body within the body-self. These engrams are repetitive and are not susceptible to symbolic transformation. Parallels between the encapsulated body engram, the autistic objects (Tustin, F. 1980. “Autistic Objects.” International Review of Psycho-Analysis 27: 27–39) and Freud's theory of inhibition (Freud, S. 1926. “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety.” SE 20: 77–175) are discussed. To unblock encapsulated engrams, body feelings emerging in the chain of associations are understood as attempts to communicate. In a process called somatic narration these perceptions are contextualized with other bodily sensations. The working-through of this material in transference and countertransference is described in the light of Lombardi's concepts (Lombardi, R. 2017. Body- Mind Dissociation in Psychoanalysis – Development after Bion. New York: Routledge). Two case reports precede the theoretical discussion.

Translation Terminable and Interminable: Psychoanalysis Between Vienna and Calcutta

Psychoanalysis, as Carl Schorske claimed, was a child of its own epoch. Marked by the political situation in Austria, Victorian moral codes, the German language and its literary tradition, readings of Classical Greco-Roman culture, and bourgeois middle-European culture, however, Sigmund Freud conceived of psychoanalysis as universal. But when in its early days psychoanalysis began traveling across the world, what came to the fore was its situated and local character rather than its universality. Once established in different locales, psychoanalytic technique adapted to different populations, fundamental texts of the discipline began to be read in other languages, and new psychoanalytic concepts emerged. What made it possible for psychoanalysis to function clinically in other contexts was a process of translation. In this article, I propose to understand the process of translation that takes place in the international circulation of psychoanalysis as one that is informed by the psychoanalytic concept of transference. I explore the kind of translation that psychoanalysis underwent in its international circulation, focusing on its history in India, with specific reference to Girindrasekhar Bose, who founded the Indian Psychoanalytical Society in Calcutta and is often considered the first non-Western psychoanalyst. I focus not only on the versions of psychoanalysis that result from this process of translation as transference, but also on what those translations of psychoanalysis might reveal about Freudian thought.

How Does Contemporary Psychoanalysis Work? The Two Analyses of Dr. R.F.

ABSTRACT An accomplished psychiatrist/psychoanalyst presents details of his ego psychological analysis during training and begins a second analysis some 20 plus years later to address remaining issues of “work and love.” The second analysis was very different from the first. This author suggests that the differences can be accounted for by the paradigmatic changes in psychoanalytic theory and technique that have occurred over the past 60 years as well as by the particular subjectivities of these two protagonists and their co-creation of a facilitative, growth-promoting intersubjective field.

The Intersubjective Revolution. Implications for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

On the occasion of our 30th anniversary, the Association of Psychoanalytic Studies would like to open a scientific debate on what has been considered a deep paradigmatic transformation, "the intersubjective revolution". We will host the leading exponents of two different disciplines, Otto Kernberg and Vittorio Gallese. They will evaluate the reciprocal implications of the role of the psychoanalyst in the psychotherapeutic relationships and give us a better understanding of the neurosci-entific basis of neurotic and psychotic disorders. Modern day research has allowed us to make a significant improvement in psychoanalytic techniques and to update the traditional different psychotherapeutic methods. For 30 years, the Association of Psychoanalytic Studies has been carrying out an original approach in the treatment of psychoses and neuroses according to the Gaetano Benedetti's framework. The Congress will collect and develop the constructive views which have been discussed within the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS). The aim is to highlight the issues that might be raised. The Congress will also make use of the in-sights and progress made by applied research of the participating individual Institu-tions and Schools, of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Massimo Ammaniti will deliver a Lectio Magistralis to conclude the Congress.

Some Considerations on the Continent/Content Theory in Psychoanalytic Technique

Each population considered in this article has been treated through numerous samples of particular cases and by different analysts. However, for the purpose of exposing the application of the continent/content theory in the different populations, a single case extract is taken as a sample per population. The populations considered here are: neurotics, users of crisis intervention services, borderline patients, and severely psychotic patients.

The Unthinkable: Representation and the Encounter With Trauma.

The author explores the notion of representation and trauma, taking into account their negative manifestation in the mind, as memories without representation. In the face of massive trauma, the mind deploys dissociative mechanisms, so the experience remains unrepresented. Psychoanalytic technique has to expand its scope in order to meet-create these unrepresented forms. Alongside our classic technique, the analyst needs to work in a particular way-one that involves a regressive state to preverbal, or even prerepresentational areas within the analyst, allowing him or her to gain access to the traumatic zones. The integration of the trauma into the systems of representations depends on the possibility of the analyst to submit to a process of regression so as to offer a substrate on which hitherto unformed experience may assume form and become represented.

The Intersubjective Revolution. Implications for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

On the occasion of our 30th anniversary, the Association of Psychoanalytic Studies would like to open a scientific debate on what has been considered a deep paradigmatic transformation, the intersubjective revolution. We will host the leading exponents of two different disciplines, Otto Kernberg and Vittorio Gallese. They will evaluate the reciprocal implications of the role of the psychoanalyst in the psychotherapeutic relationships and give us a better understanding of the neuroscientific basis of neurotic and psychotic disorders. Modern day research has allowed us to make a significant improvement in psychoanalytic techniques and to update the traditional different psychotherapeutic methods. For 30 years, the Association of Psychoanalytic Studies has been carrying out an original approach in the treatment of psychoses and neuroses according to the framework of Gaetano Benedetti. The Congress will collect and develop the constructive views which have been discussed within the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies. The aim is to highlight the issues that might be raised. The Congress will also make use of the insights and progress made by applied research of the participating individual institutions and schools, of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Massimo Ammaniti will deliver a Lectio Magistralis to conclude the Congress.