Psychotherapy,psychoanalysis

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BACKGROUND: Whether and how psychotherapies change brain structure and function is unknown. Its study is of great importance for contemporary psychotherapy, as it may lead to discovery of neurobiological mechanisms that predict and mediate lasting changes in psychotherapy, particularly in severely mentally ill patients, such as those with chronic depression. Previous studies have shown that psychoanalytic psychotherapies produce robust and enduring improvements in not only symptom severity but also personality organization in patients who have chronic depression and early life trauma, especially if therapy is delivered at a high weekly frequency...

This paper focuses on how for some young people who identify as transgender, the anticipation, and/or the actual process, of transitioning represents a movement away from something in themselves that feels wrong, painful, or traumatic and that has not yet been consciously recognised as such. This becomes a 'missing' part of the self's experience, locked into the body. I suggest that the process of identifying and restitution of 'the missing' part requires working through the natal body in its metaphorical and literal senses, in the service of expanding autonomous choice about how to find a hospitable home in the body...

Homework assignments, or specific tasks patients are asked to engage in or complete between sessions, are a controversial topic among psychoanalysts. While many argue these interventions contradict psychoanalytic principles, others believe they can help address problems and promote coping skills. We propose that homework can be a legitimate aspect of relational psychoanalysis when used in a way that is attuned to the patient's experience and that homework may be an important component of treating personality disorders (PD)...

AIM: The aim of the present research is to assess the satisfaction levels of participants in a multifamily psychoanalysis group conducted within a territorial mental health service, following the model developed by Argentine psychoanalyst Jorge García Badaracco. METHODS: To evaluate participant satisfaction in the therapeutic group, an anonymous satisfaction questionnaire was adopted and administered during each multifamily therapy session between 2016 and 2019...

The authors provide an overview of psychiatry and psychodynamic psychotherapy in Thailand, including a discussion of practice patterns, trends, and the cultural context of the delivery of psychotherapy services in this Southeast Asian country. They discuss a way forward in psychodynamic psychotherapy training that is collaborative, self-sustaining, and leads to competence. They address how to culturally adapt psychodynamic psychotherapy and suggest areas of research that would advance the field. Lastly, they discuss psychodynamic pedagogical strategies that may be acceptable and effective in underserved areas...

Psychedelic substances have a long history of use in traditional healing and religious ceremonies worldwide and are increasingly being investigated for their possible therapeutic usage. However, there is still a lack of consensus regarding how best to characterize the psychological effects of psychedelics and how they bring about the positive therapeutic outcomes observed in clinical studies. The aim of this article is to review available evidence from quantitative and qualitative studies on psychedelic-assisted therapy, as well as neurobiological studies, in relation to the hypothesis that psychedelics facilitate the emergence of emotionally charged unconscious material, originally proposed by pioneering psychedelics researcher Stanislav Grof...

The concept of pensée opératoire (operational thinking) was introduced by French psychoanalysts in 1963 and a decade later was included as an essential component of the alexithymia construct as formulated by the U.S. analysts John Nemiah and Peter Sifneos. Despite a large body of research on alexithymia, the pensée opératoire component is not well understood, especially among clinicians and researchers who are not familiar with French psychoanalytic literature. In this article we clarify the definition and metapsychological conceptualization of the concept, review findings from some relevant empirical studies, and critique a recent proposal for redefining the alexithymia construct that departs from the original understanding of pensée opératoire...

Psychoanalysis has long lost its historical influence on U.S. academic psychiatry. Psychoanalytic theory, however, provides us with a rich and remarkably comprehensive knowledge of human development, both normative and pathologic. This article describes a psychoanalytic concept that enriches our understanding of the mind and its disorders: Freud's structural hypothesis. This core concept provides a theoretical foundation for understanding the clinical features of both neurotic and personality disorders. It also informs a psychodynamic psychotherapy...

Over the years, the psychiatric inpatient treatment paradigm has shifted to more brief stays focused on acute stabilization and psychopharmacologic-focused interventions, rather than individual psychotherapeutic engagement. Unfortunately, this has allowed patients with complex interpersonal dynamics, particularly borderline personality disorder, to slip through the cracks of effective treatment. This can contribute to repeated inpatient admissions, where both patients and clinicians feel trapped in a maladaptive, unhelpful cycle...

Several evidence-based psychotherapies for personality disorders have been developed in recent decades, including transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP), a contemporary model of psychodynamic psychotherapy developed by Otto Kernberg. Kernberg established Group TFP (TFP-G) as an alternative or adjunct treatment to individual TFP. Although not yet manualized, TFP-G is used in publicly and privately funded mental health services, including outpatient clinics, subacute hospitals, therapeutic inpatient units, partial hospitalization services, and rehabilitation services serving people with borderline personality...

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OBJECTIVE: Time-limited didactic interventions have been shown to be effective in developing "generic" case conceptualization skills. The objective of this study is to test whether similar interventions can be used to develop case conceptualization skills that are "specific" to a treatment modality. METHOD: University psychology students were randomized to a target ( n  = 62) or a control group ( n  = 62). The target group received a training on psychoanalytic case conceptualization skills based on the newly-developed operators model...

BACKGROUND: Free association is a core concept of the free association narrative interview method, an approach that is well-known among researchers in the UK who are interested in using psychoanalytic ideas in qualitative psycho-social research. AIM: To examine the relationship between the framing of the psychoanalytic concept of free association in the contexts of qualitative research interviewing, clinical psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy...

OBJECTIVE: Lacan is often deemed an obscure theorist with little clinical application. However, in film studies his psychoanalytic theory has been highly influential. This paper is part of a series of articles published in this journal accompanying a psychiatry registrar teaching programme on film and psychodynamic concepts. It introduces the Lacanian ideas of the Symbolic, Imaginary and Real as they appear in Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog, and discusses their societal and clinical significance...

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Responses to the question of teletherapy have multiplied over the past decades, yet many therapists are grappling with the challenges and opportunities of teletherapy for the first time in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. For many clinicians, teletherapy was, at least initially, unfamiliar and unsettling. Much of the literature construes teletherapy as a degradation of an original-incapable of providing the intimacy achieved and maintained in two-bodies-in-a-room therapy-or as a good enough simulation. Both positions risk enshrining the consulting room as offering an unmediated scene of therapy...

One of the main concepts of the psychoanalytic method postulated by Freud in 1912 is the fundamental rule, which involves asking the patient to say whatever comes to mind as the analyst follows the patient's speech with fluctuating attention. Despite different theoretical models, this concept has remained an invariant element that characterizes the psychoanalytic method. For this reason, the purpose of the current study is to present a new instrument that measures this process based on the clinician's assessment...

Iran, as one of the oldest civilizations in the world, is positioned at the crossroads of important trade routes linking Asia, Africa, and Europe, resulting in enormous cultural interactions with the East and West. The development of modern psychiatry and psychodynamic psychiatry in Iran occurred in the context of the broader process of modernization through interactions with the West. Mentioning key scholars and influences that helped establish a psychodynamic tradition within centralized government-led systems of mental health care and medical education, the author describes various stages of the development of psychodynamic psychiatry in Iran...

Engaging the silent adolescent is a major psychotherapeutic challenge. This article presents a comprehensive approach to this problem, illustrated with clinical material. This approach emphasizes a careful diagnostic assessment, including an assessment of the patient's level of personality organization and capacities to participate in psychodynamic psychotherapy. Three approaches to the silent teenager are explored in depth: a mostly supportive approach focused on containment of maladaptive behaviors; a psychodynamic approach with supportive elements focused on demonstrating safety through humor, play, normalization, and self-disclosure while exploring the patient's automatic relationship patterns; and a psychodynamic approach using transference-focused psychotherapy for adolescents (TFP-A), aimed at effecting long-lasting changes in the patient's views of self and others and their characteristic ways of managing conflict and stress, with gradual movement from a tendency for controlling, protective silence to vulnerable, cooperative sharing...