British Journal of Psychotherapy最新文献

Being an Indian psychoanalyst is being both inside and outside psychoanalysis. I will try to expand an understanding of mimicry within colonised contexts. Power asymmetries determine who learns and who teaches. The dynamic reveals that what begins as hegemonic is constantly subject to transformation, and what begins as self-definition becomes assertion. Mimicry itself expands from “adhesive identification” to accommodate parodic and pidgin versions, rendering texts generated from colonial contact into hybrid tongues. As colonisation leaves behind a residual inferiority, Indians do not evade “internalised racism”. This generates an emotional multivalence towards ‘white psychoanalysis’ which makes psychoanalytic texts from the colony a rich repository of contradictory desires and conflicting identifications. This paper explores the writings of a few psychoanalysts of Indian origin to examine how this “hyphenated space” may be inhabited variously, often depending on the extent of mourning.

This paper critically examines psychoanalysis—particularly ego psychology—by contrasting it with Sufism's approach to the psyche. Drawing on the insights of the Sufi teacher and psychiatrist Javād Nurbakhsh, alongside classical Sufi literature, it argues that the Sufi perspective on the psyche provides insights that challenge the paradigms of ego-based approaches such as ego psychology. In this context, the topics of love and narcissism are explored as prime examples that emphasise a fundamental difference between the Sufi and psychoanalytic models: While psychoanalysis tends to interpret love through the lens of ego-driven and self-referential narcissism, Sufism regards love as a state that overcomes the ego. Without rejecting the notion of love as a self-referential phenomenon, this paper reframes the concept of ‘self-referentiality’, proposing an alternative understanding of it as an egoless state. The aim is to bring to light the advantages of approaches that go beyond ego-centered models of the psyche. Furthermore, the therapeutic implications of the Sufi approach are also explored, particularly regarding the Sufi emphasis on the ‘annihilation of the ego’ as a form of healing.

Metaphors, embedded in everyday life, art, literature and the theoretical frameworks of various sciences, shape our interests and influence how we observe, perceive, construct and articulate complex and abstract aspects of reality. Recognizing the metaphorical dimension of our theoretical perspectives prevents us from reifying them—mistaking concepts for direct representations of reality—and from rigidly clinging to our perceptions and beliefs. While analytic therapeutic literature has explored these issues, it has rarely examined them within the supervisory process that focuses on the meanings of therapeutic interactions. Drawing insights from psychoanalytic and philosophical literature, this paper explores the interrelations between recognizing the metaphorical dimension in supervisory theoretical perspectives, adopting a self-critical stance and fostering mutual recognition in the supervisory dialogues. It will be argued that these interconnected elements are essential for achieving the supervisory process's initial and most fundamental goal: making sense of what transpired within the presented therapeutic framework.

This article reviews the conceptualization of mind and therapeutic action in the relational psychoanalytic tradition. It briefly presents the history of relational psychoanalytic thinking that developed from multifaceted clinical experience that both found lacking and challenged classical theory. The review traces relational theory to interpersonal psychoanalysis, which was extended by object relations theory, self-psychology and postmodern epistemology. The paper presents dissociation, multiplicity of self and generative enactments as hallmarks of the relational psychoanalytic tradition. Relational psychoanalysis understands the human mind as composed of horizontally organized self-states. Health is defined as the ability to move flexibly and acceptingly between different self-states, including those that are hated, feared, shamed and even regressive. The denial or avoidance of self-states is conceptualized as dissociative experience, a fertile ground for cumbersome enactments in the therapeutic relationship. As for the implications for therapeutic action, relational theory contends that the therapist's dissociated self-state significantly influences countertransference and can lead to entrenched enactments in the therapeutic process. The article discusses implications of these relational perspectives on both case conceptualization and clinical understanding of the therapeutic situation at hand in different phases of the therapeutic process. The article frequently returns to the work of Winnicott because his work both anticipated the relational turn in psychoanalysis and becomes revitalized in the light of relational theory.

Organ transplantation is a complex psychodynamic process. Previous psychoanalytic research has mainly dealt with the psychological integration of the new organ and the conscious and unconscious relationship of the recipient to the transplanted organ and the donor. Some works have also explored organ transplantation from a Lacanian perspective, particularly about the patient (subject) and the transplanted organ (conceptualised as the object a). In the current paper, the processes of signification as well as the integration of the new organ are examined against the Lacanian background of the neurotic, perverse and psychotic structure. An important factor that determines the nature of these structures is the mirror operator. It is a logical operation that mediates between different spaces, for example, in the Lacanian fields, the spaces of the real, the imaginary and the symbolic. The authors discuss the clinical implications for transplant patients and the logical function of the mirror operator in the psychosomatic torus (as a topological model). Jean-Luc Nancy's essay ‘The Intruder’ and the eponymous film by Claire Denis, which dealt with the experience of a heart transplant, are additionally taken into account here.

In psychotherapeutic practice, trauma—and its resolution—frequently requires some recognition of the role played by injustice. How and to what extent societies and their legal systems choose to provide formal recognition mechanisms in support of resolving traumas will have a direct impact upon the incidence of mental health, crimes and individual and collective values in the wider community. Trauma associated with the legal system itself, or with broader notions such as ‘social injustice’ may invoke consideration of justice, yet the word ‘injustice’ alone does not appear readily in the lexicon of therapeutic modalities in speaking to the ‘everyday’ experiences emerging in the therapeutic space. So much of client trauma derives from an assault upon personal agency, whether by accident or design, and much recovery involves the restoration of agency by at least calling out the fact of injustice and, through therapy, supporting the empowerment of individuals in determining aspects of their own lives and choices. This paper explores the relevance of the words ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’—especially in their relevance to ‘everyday’ experience—in the therapeutic space.

We aimed to investigate (1) if trainee therapists differ from controls regarding childhood maltreatment and adult attachment and (2) if there are associations between childhood maltreatment, adult attachment and the alliance bond capacity. To answer the 1st question, a sample of 134 trainees and psychology students was matched to population-representative controls (CTQ: N = 2504, ECR-S: N = 2555) and compared on the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale (ECR-S). For the 2nd question, the Facilitative Interpersonal Skills task was used to measure trainees' alliance bond capacity. Regression analysis was performed with age, gender, training status, CTQ and ECR-S scales as potential predictors. We found that psychology students and trainees reported more childhood emotional abuse (t = −6.268; p < 0.001), but less physical neglect (t = 2.927; p = 0.004), a lower tendency to minimize or deny adverse experiences (t = 5.415; p < 0.001) and less attachment avoidance (t = 3.048, p = 0.003) than controls. The alliance bond capacity was predicted by greater therapeutic experience (students vs. trainee, β = −0.284, p = 0.003; with vs. without licence to practise, β = −0.218, p = 0.025) and greater childhood physical abuse (β = 0.200, p = 0.035). Our results emphasize addressing therapists' personal wounds. The potential beneficial effects, suggested by the positive association between physical abuse and alliance bond capacity, require further investigation and replication.