Psychodynamic Psychiatry最新文献

This case report highlights the potential role of the Jungian archetype in the case of pseudocyesis and its ability to alleviate psychic distress and symptoms of psychosis. In this article, we review the archetype concept in Jungian and biological terms. We then focus on the Great Mother archetype, which has been expressed in human culture since its beginning in various archetypal images and themes. Using these theories, we present a case of pseudocyesis to illustrate how the potential of pregnancy and the prospect of motherhood psychologically led to improvements in mental state, specifically psychotic symptoms.

The recovery movement for serious mental illness emphasizes holistic, person-centered care. Clinical innovation, policy, and research in recovery has focused on identity, empowerment, and meaning. Psychoanalytic theories, which emphasize identity formation, stress the developmental importance of mourning on separation, autonomy, and identity consolidation. These approaches can meaningfully complement each other. Therapeutic interventions based on a psychoanalytic conceptualization of mourning can help individuals with psychosis acknowledge and grieve their losses and disappointments, enhancing recovery-oriented treatment by fostering identity development, agency, and meaning.

This article explores the historical and phenomenological overlap between borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia, highlighting the presence of frank psychotic symptoms and psychotic and psychotic-like thinking in borderline psychopathology. Early theorists conceptualized borderline personality as a schizophrenia-like syndrome, and many pioneers in the understanding of borderline pathology began their careers with interest in schizophrenia. Similarities between the two syndromes include affect-laden perception; ideas of reference; paranoid tendencies, especially suspicious and reactive jealousy; and regression to paleologic rather than logical modes of thought. It is argued that these similarities may demonstrate the borderline syndrome's adjacency to schizophrenia on the continuum of psychopathology. This has potential relevance to the ongoing debate surrounding the appropriateness of the term borderline to describe this clinical syndrome.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have traditionally been the gold standard for determining whether a treatment is empirically supported. Nevertheless, there has been an increase in criticism of RCTs for psychotherapeutic research due to their high rate of biases, lack of replicability, and discrepancies in real-world applications. The author discusses the weaknesses of RCTs and the need to refine how we view psychotherapeutic treatments as efficacious.

The supervisory dialogue about the meanings of the supervisee's therapeutic experiences is characterized by both facilitative and disruptive underlying forces. Partly, the disruptive forces pertain to transferences that result from either repression or dissociation and require exploration and interpretation. They also partly pertain to dialectical tensions resulting from differences and contradictions. In this article I focus on the dialectical tensions that result from the difference between the participants' fundamental motivations to assert themselves; these tensions require mutual recognition to overcome them. I also discuss tensions that result from inherent different perspectives on the narrated therapeutic interaction and that require adopting metaperspectives to overcome them. Resolving dialectical tensions helps the participants achieve a higher-order conceptualization of the supervisee's therapeutic experiences and grow personally and professionally.

Introduction: This study explored the relationship between different types of interpersonal guilt as conceived according to control-mastery theory and emotion dysregulation, mentalization, frustration intolerance, and body appreciation. Methods: We recruited 200 participants to whom we administered the Interpersonal Guilt Rating Scale-20, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-Short Form, the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire-8, the Frustration Discomfort Scale, the Body Appreciation Scale-2, and a sociodemographic schedule. Results: The data revealed that self-hate and burdening guilt were positively associated with emotion dysregulation and negatively associated with body appreciation. Frustration intolerance correlated with burdening guilt, while mentalization impairments were linked to self-hate. Both constructs also positively correlated with separation/disloyalty guilt. Discussion: The findings of this study underline the association between several guilt-related pathogenic beliefs and relevant psychopathological factors such as emotional dysregulation, mentalization difficulties, frustration intolerance, and body dissatisfaction. Among the pathogenic beliefs investigated, a particular role is played by the belief that one is bad, inadequate, and undeserving; the belief that one's own emotions, needs, and way of being is a burden to other people; and the beliefs that separating physically or psychologically from important others may hurt them. The clinical implications of these finds are discussed.

This article addresses the question of how individuals construct their picture of reality and develop a sense of meaning in their lives. This question is pertinent to effecting and understanding change in the process of psychodynamic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Three themes are explored. The description and utilization of a particular form of clarification that is not described in the psychoanalytic literature is followed by an illustration of how this form of clarification creates order and cohesion in one's life. This is further developed by a discussion of how the philosophical concept of constructivism enriches this awareness. Patient anecdotes illustrate these themes.

Psychotherapy was until recently described from a biological standpoint as causing structural changes in the brain and physiological alterations of neurotransmission pathways. Current research recognizes that psychotherapy also causes changes at the level of the DNA, with alterations in epigenetic mechanisms that correlate with symptom reduction and treatment response. The authors provide a brief overview of the evolving research in epigenetics, highlighting the association between trauma, DNA methylation patterns of specific gene regions, and psychiatric disorders. They also review several studies that show that various evidence-based psychotherapy interventions recalibrate these DNA methylation abnormalities. Finally, they identify studies that measured DNA methylation of BDNF and HTR3A genes and suggest that these may serve as biological markers of response to psychotherapy.