Transference Countertransference Research Articles

Peningkatan Pemahaman Kepribadian Diri Mahasiswa Bimbingan dan Konseling dengan Penugasan Essai Refleksi

The learning strategy of giving evaluation quizzes is considered less appropriate in increasing students' understanding of personality psychology course material. Based on the results of the evaluation quiz scores for the post-presentational group presentation, it is known that an average of 85 students scored below 70. This condition confirms the failure to achieve the learning objectives of the personality psychology course, namely providing insight into understanding as well as providing the counselor with basic skills of self-reflection to be able to empathize with various types. own personality. Classroom action research (CAR) successfully conducted a SWOT analysis of the implementation of the development of self-reflection essay assignments on 85 students of Islamic guidance and counseling. Self-reflection essays are recommended in personality psychology classes. Students are given many challenges to see their strengths and weaknesses. Self-reflection essays can also be an opportunity for prospective counselors to identify and recognize issues of self-unfinished business in order to avoid negative transference countertransference personal issues. Suggestions for further PTK researchers include being able to try out the method of assigning self-reflection essays to other subjects that are still of the same scientific background, such as the introduction of the basic competencies of a guidance and counseling counselor and the counselor's code of ethics.

On Supervisees’ Sense of Agency and Safety

To be alive and maintain an analytic stance amid transference–countertransference challenges, therapists need to experience both agency and safety. Their sense of safety increases when they connect with their internal analytic community’s representations and their sense of agency increases when they disengage from these representations. When therapists maintain the dialectical tension between these positions, they can choose a third position, to move between connecting and disengaging from the internal representations, in tune with the clinical context. Supervisors help their supervisees to contain this dialectical tension by manifesting their own sense of safety and agency when taking responsibility for their failures to understand the supervisees’ and the patients’ experiences. Furthermore, supervisors help foster the supervisees’ agency and safety separately. They help foster agency by finding autonomous and spontaneous solutions to clinical issues and help foster safety by drawing on the analytic community’s knowledge, to anchor the supervisees’ intuitive discoveries in a conceptual network, and clarify and stabilize the reality and boundaries in supervised therapies.

Transference and Countertransference Dynamics in a Multifamily Group for Transgender Adolescents.

This article is an account of a pioneering multifamily group for transgender adolescents. Meetings were conducted in a Sexual Identity Consultation Service in a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department in Paris. In addition to enabling both teenagers and their parents to escape a certain form of isolation, this novel mental health care setting also reinforced the ability of participants to free associate and to cathect substitute objects. The author highlights specific characteristics of transference movements and countertransference reactions of the therapists in this framework. An additional goal is to promote these innovative groups and to recommend similar groups for transgender adolescents and their parents.

The contaminated analyst and transgenerational trauma in Abkhazia après‐coup

The Covid‐19 pandemic lockdown and restrictions imposed on freedom of movement in Georgia and the economic collapse as a result, evoked psychotic anxieties in society and revived a traumatic not‐too‐distant past that has not actually been worked through. Fear of an unknown virus and danger has turned into a feeling of war, which was so familiar and constant in the immediate past of Georgian history: the Soviet‐Union, the 1991–1993 Civil War, the contant threat of Russia which occupied two regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In this paper, I try to explain how the current traumatic situation in Georgia related to Covid‐19 gave après‐coup a new meaning to the transgenerational trauma. I presented the material of two of my patients, whose childhood was affected by the war in Abkhazia (1992–1993), the conflict that followed the declaration of independence of Georgia and led to the Russian occupation of its territories. Because of my contamination with Covid‐19 in transference–countertransference, the Covid turned into an inner conflict. The need and inevitability of informing patients about my infection caused a counter‐transference acting out with paranoid‐schizoïd splitting, projective identifications, unbearable pain and guilt, fear of starvation, and reparation.

Psychodynamics in Diabetes: The Relevance of Deepening the Symbolic in Treatment Adherence.

Among chronic diseases, diabetes is recognized as a major health risk negatively affecting the quality of life, with significant morbidity and mortality rates (World Health Organization, 2018), which is expected to rise to 552 million people by 2030, leading to considerable health expenditures (Whiting et al., 2011; Khan et al., 2020). Given its long-lasting nature and risky complications, diabetes requires continuous self-care including being active, eating healthily, taking medication, monitoring symptoms, solving problems, reducing risks, and healthy coping (Di Biase et al., 1997; Glasgow et al., 2008), thus making diabetes management and treatment adherence relevant challenges. In this regard, depressive and anxiety symptoms are often reported by patients with diabetes because of the disease-related distress including worry about complications, fear of hypoglycemia, and guilt feelings about uncontrolled blood glucose (Nouwen, 2015; Sartorius, 2018; Shinkov et al., 2018; Wardian et al., 2018). Overall, this difficulty complying with the stressful rigors of diabetes and required lifestyle changes tends to worsen glycemic control, resulting in higher hemoglobin A1c levels and less optimal outcomes (Whithorth et al., 2016; Egan et al., 2017; Fukuda and Mizobe, 2017; Graham et al., 2020; Schmitt et al., 2021). Therefore, to promote higher patient self-care and treatment adherence, a primary task for healthcare professionals is reducing diabetes distress by improving patients' skills at regulating negative emotions (Coccaro et al., 2021). Emotion awareness and management in diabetes care are based on the capacity to deal with feelings and thoughts on both conscious and unconscious levels (Ivinson, 1995). From such a perspective, a psychodynamic approach can provide a significant contribution to a better understanding of the patient's emotional life. This article provides some basic psychodynamic insights with a practical value, focusing on the concepts of alexithymia, defense mechanisms, loss, mourning, and transference–countertransference dynamics in the therapeutic relationship. This may also help medical and nursing professions dealing with diabetes care to reconsider patient difficulties and communication through a new lens, thus improving clinical observation and care.

Whose Envy Is It Anyway?

In this paper I offer a description of a patient with a prolonged dissociated transference and my countertransference reactions to her. Envy, both hers and mine, permeated our interactions and prevented me from dealing directly with her aggression. I will discuss the process of disentanglement and emotional differentiation that was triggered by a therapeutic crisis that penetrated the dreamlike state and led to a productive treatment of the patient’s envy.

How difficult it is to think about uncertainty and perplexity

ABSTRACT The author has covered a range of issues to define concepts in psychoanalytic terms that are missing from psychoanalytic theory: the social, social subjectivity, the pain of the social, unpredictability, and uncertainty. First, she reconsiders social pain and social suffering from the perspective proposed by Freud in 1921 in terms of three psychic spaces – intersubjective, intrasubjective and transsubjective – which she considers to be different from one another, and she proposes that pain is manifested in different modes in each of these spaces. Second, she defines the concept of the social, separating it from the mass and proposing the concept of the collective as truly social. She emphasizes that the collective takes on its subjectivating potential when being together builds a “bond” (vínculo). Third, she considers that belonging to a “social” collective creates the illusion of being protected from uncertainty and unpredictability. She identifies uncertainty as a vínculo-regulating psychoanalytic principle that is manifested as perplexity. Finally, at the end of the paper, a section titled “A few situations” includes examples of daily clinical work with patients who have been tortured or who experience political threats or a threat to their lives due to losing their jobs and, as a result, their livelihoods. The final case, which describes an entire session, shows the dynamics of transference–countertransference in working with these situations.

Generation Z – everyday (living with an) auxiliary ego

We know that there are significant differences between generations of our patients in certain aspects related to the differences in historical and socioeconomic circumstances of their development. New informational technologies – smartphones and mobile Internet – are taking the role of an ever-present auxiliary ego for the generations born in the twenty-first century. This development is influenced by the characteristics of these technologies and by changes in parenting patterns. Psychoanalytic literature tends to focus on only the negative influences of these factors on the development of personality, identity, and interpersonal relationships. Probably this reflects our own fears about the invasion of new technologies into our lives and limits our understanding of the possible positive potential of these technologies for the younger generations. We still need to gain a better understanding of what it brings to our analytic work, and our transference–countertransference relationships with adolescent patients.

The Power of Traces

AbstractThis article deals with the limits of words, images, and symbols and explores the idea that “residues” or “rests” may surface and rupture the tissue of conventional knowledge. L'Actuel, a notion developed in contemporary French psychoanalysis, serves as a guiding thread for this exploration. It points towards a kind of enigmatic “real” that may surface during the psychoanalytic session, “in presence,” specifically under cover of the transference–countertransference energy. It may either open to the identification and elaboration of an obscure nucleus of experience or surge as pure discharge and endanger the psychoanalytic session. Analogous “residues” resisting symbolic representation and meaning may also be identified at the levels of culture and history. Identifying them and grasping their significance requires a particular sensibility to discrepancy and unexpected recurrences. Breaking with ideas of beauty and harmony, contemporary art offers a privileged avenue for the emergence and treatment of traces haunting us as humans. Freud's notion of kulturarbeit is evoked in that context. [l'actuel; psychoanalytic sessions; cultural residues; hidden history]

When the Assessor’s Limits Are Tested: Enactments and the Assessment Frame in Psychological Testing

Limit testing in psychological assessment is understood typically as a unidirectional technique in which the assessor intentionally introduces a parameter(s) in the service of data gathering by modifying standard procedures. Other parameters are introduced as conflict-based enactments tied to projective identification processes, and represent modifications in the assessment framework. Such modifications, abstracted from the psychotherapy literature, include atypical shifts in the assessor’s usual practices concerning fees, scheduling, confidentiality, privacy, anonymity, administrative and technical procedure, and intervention style. In this article, I suggest that most framework modifications, if analyzed, hold the promise of an incremental data yield. These points are illustrated through discussion of (a) the assessment frame, enactments, and projective identification; (b) transference–countertransference interplay in response to frame issues; (c) 2 Rorschach responses that symbolically reflect enactments and projective identification; (d) interaction with coding consultants; (e) configurational analyses of the Rorschach responses; (f) patient–assessor and assessor–consultant parallel processes; and (g) test feedback.

Something and Nothing, Aliveness and Deadness: Discussion of “Three Dimensional Field Theory”

In this discussion of Philip Ringstrom’s provocative paper (this issue), I attempt to elaborate on several concepts: the role of “something” and “nothing” in psychoanalytic treatment, the problematic nature of the search for truth, the dialectic of aliveness and deadness, and the inevitability of improvisation in the pursuit of aliveness in the crucible of treatment. I also enumerate several transference–countertransference vulnerabilities inherent in improvisation.

Contributions of Attachment Research to Understanding Dissociative Attunement

This discussion elaborates the author’s use of attachment theory and research to understanding Susan’s clinical process (see Jacobs, this issue). I have delineated different patterns of attachment, its precursors in infancy, both in infant parent interactions and in parent’s state of mind with respect to attachment. I also link this to how dissociative process can be embedded in a combination of infant disorganization and trauma. I think that clinical applications of the ideas Jacobs and I subscribe to add a great deal to understanding how unformulated experiences with a frightened and frightening parent can lead to a person’s vulnerability to developing dissociative responses to later trauma. The dialogic nature of infant parent attachment experiences can further enrich an understanding of how certain transference–countertransference enactments are manifestations of certain kinds of procedural or relational knowing. In this way, clinicians can further understand the possibilities for psychic transformation as embedded in bearing that which was experienced but which cannot yet be known.

THE "METHOD OF GAME": SÁNDOR FERENCZI AND HIS PATIENT DM./CLARA THOMPSON.

The aim of this paper is to study the Thompson-Ferenczi therapeutic relationship. Ferenczi paid increasing attention to the way in which patient's early life experiences were reenacted in the transference countertransference matrix. Ferenczi's (1931) description of how he "entered into a game" with a patient, has come to be known as enactment. Ferenczi exchanged the word "game" with "play" when patients enacted their past traumatic experiences in analysis. These enactments uncovered the unconscious "dialogue of the game" (Ferenczi, 1932, p. 130), and Ferenczi described them in his Clinical Diary (1932) in his work with Thompson. Using the language of her analyst in describing enactment, Thompson referred to Ferenczi's Relaxation Method as his "play technique". During these moments of "play" Thompson argues that the analyst cooperates with the patient in allowing him to relive "childish attachments" in the context of the treatment.

The Intricate Process of Psychoanalytic Research: Encountering the Intersubjective Experience of the Researcher–Participant Relationship

Qualitative research in general and the psychoanalytically informed research interview method specifically, can be emotionally demanding on researchers as they form relationships with participants. This is especially the case when researchers and participants share particular identities and experiences. In this paper I reflect on my experience of interviewing mothers raising children with a visible physical disability about their maternal subjectivity. At times this was an emotionally demanding and ethically challenging process as participants closely identified with certain aspects of my identity, particularly with my visible physical disability and motherhood peculiarities. Often participants unexpectedly reversed our roles, asking me intimate questions. I will deliberate these dilemmas using interview material. I argue for a mindful blurring with participants when this occurs. Using certain psychoanalytic‐researcher concepts of intersubjectivity, transference–countertransference and psychoanalytic‐researcher thirdness helped me successfully navigate these encounters. I will also explore the rich participant psychic functioning that was generated from this intersubjective relationship between myself and the participants.

Mundus Imaginalis: Bridging Body and Spirit

For thousands of years, humanity has grappled with questions about the nature of the mind, the soul, and imagination, wondering from whence images come. The quest to deepen our understanding of mental images and imagination has, by itself, been instrumental in the development of consciousness. Depth psychology still struggles with fundamental questions about the origins of imagination. The concept of the mundus imaginalis, which was introduced by James Hillman into analytical psychology, has its origins in Sufism, the largest form of Islamic mysticism, and was borrowed from the work of Henry Corbin, a major scholar on Islam. This article brings together some ideas from physics with clinical observations and theoretical ideas on mundus imaginalis from analytical psychology and mysticism, and proposes that depth psychotherapy and analysis often involve a deeper connection to mundus imaginalis, requiring a coniunctio between body and spirit. Furthermore, the complex union between mundus imaginalis, body, and spirit may often lead spontaneously to the activation of synchronicity in the dynamic energetic analytic field, further facilitating individuation, healing, and transformation. These ideas have profound implications for a deeper understanding of various states of reverie, including bodily experiences and psychospiritual images/states in the dynamic transference–countertransference field, as well as in art and creativity.

Manifestações inconscientes na relação líder-liderado: contribuições da teoria psicanalítica aos estudos organizacionais

Resumo Este estudo teve por objetivo compreender as manifestações inconscientes que transpassam a relação líder-liderado, nas organizações. Tais díades foram formadas por pares opositivos dependentes, quais sejam: transferência-contratransferência; projeção-introjeção; idealização-identificação - todos fenômenos construídos por Sigmund Freud como sendo da ordem do inconsciente. Na etapa teórica, partimos da historicidade da abordagem psicanalítica das organizações: a) a análise dos estudos psicanalíticos, desde o campo social ao campo organizacional (note-se que o próprio Freud diz ser o inconsciente também social); b) o centro da etapa teórica é constituído por uma leitura psicanalítica dos fenômenos da liderança; e c) a teorização sobre as três principais díades inconscientes que atuam na relação líder-liderado. Como método, utilizou-se a psicossociologia e a entrevista clínica de Lévy. A análise dos resultados inicialmente prevista nos objetivos precisou ser - por inúmeros motivos - alterada durante a elaboração do artigo, uma vez que, na relação da díade transferência-contratransferência, encontra-se uma complexidade maior do que a esperada e que não poderia ser desperdiçada nas interpretações. Uma das relações mais evidenciadas nas conclusões foi visualizada e possibilita compreender melhor a maneira pela qual a identificação é engendrada a partir da relação dual entre a projeção e a introjeção.

Psychotherapy with People who have Disorganised Attachment Patterns in a Psychodynamic and Attachment Theory Informed Setting

The story of my work with a woman who has a dissociative disorder is presented from an attachment perspective. Someone with a disorganised/disoriented attachment status requires a different approach. Within an attachment and psychoanalytic psychotherapy approach I describe how by centring on issues of selfregulation (dissociative withdrawal) and interactive regulation, when the patient was in a highly helpless and frightened state, an enactment emerged that mirrored the interactions she had had with her parents. Within our growing mutual understanding of the mosaic of the transference–countertransference matrix a pattern was discernible: each time the therapist felt pressured to act she was caught in a repetition of earlier frightening and perverse relationships. Thinking and reflecting on these enactments enabled the patient to differentiate between past and present and helped her to verbalise her unmentalized feelings.

Issues in consultation for treatments with distressed activated abuser/protector self-states in dissociative identity disorder

ABSTRACTThe identified “problem self-state” in a dissociative disorder consultation is like the identified patient in a family therapy; the one who is identified may have an assigned role to be blamed which serves the function of deflecting the activities of painful self-states in other family members. In consultation, the “family” includes the therapist in addition to the patient. When the state identified as a problem self-state is an abuser/protector self-state, complications often involve the profound nature of transference–countertransference enactments between patient and therapist, the delusion of separateness, chronic and acute threats of suicide, negative therapeutic reactions, and the evocation of intense negativity. They also involve affect phobia in both patient and therapist, and the emergence of intense shame in the clinical dyad amongst additional potential burdens in these complicated treatments. The task of the consultant is to protect both patient and therapist from an untoward outcome while relieving the painful burdens entailed by the treatment. The typical core dynamic of the abuser/protector state is as a repository for shame/humiliation welded to anger/rage. This dynamic, and others, must be understood in order to resolve these impasses and create useful movement toward growth in both patient and therapist.

Challenging Fathers

In this paper, I explore what I perceive to be the curative elements of Freud’s one-session consultation with Margarethe Lutz. There are numerous lessons to be learned about Freud’s use of his subjectivity, direct suggestion, transference–countertransference, and other points of interest for contemporary clinicians. In this meeting we witness a departure from—or a new understanding of—classical technique and in its place find a style that we might be more apt to think of as relational. Elements of my own subjective responses to Lutz’s recollection and the writing of this response are also discussed.

To Dream, Perchance to Think: Discussion of Papers by Noelle Burton and Christopher Bonovitz

This is a discussion of papers by Noelle Burton and Christopher Bonovitz, which explores clinical work with patients who are either developmentally incapable of articulating symbolic thought or immersed in a transference–countertransference position in which abstract thinking is foreclosed.