British Journal of Psychotherapy最新文献

The process of psychotherapy invites the patient to explore their mind and the mind of the other but does so in the context of a therapeutic relationship in which the therapist is at least partly unknown. This article explores how patients, unbeknown to their therapist, explore clues that may disclose some knowledge about their therapists. One route towards exploring the unknown is through the therapist's social identities. The article presents an analysis of interviews conducted with 11 patients attending a free clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa. Their process of exploring the therapist and encountering the unknown, and wondering about whether their therapist can know them, is presented. The therapist's social identities offer a ‘glimpse’ into the therapist's mind. The article offers an alternative way of approaching inadvertent self-disclosure and invites therapists to be aware of their patients' explorations of them that may remain unknown to therapists. Social identity offers a potential vehicle for alienation but also for connection.

Historically, analytic/Jungian psychotherapy has pathologised same-sex/queer desire and excluded lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) and queer individuals from training as therapists. A mixed-method study, conducted between 2014 and 2021, aimed to clarify how UK analytic/Jungian therapists working today thought about theory, clinical practice and training in relation to same-sex/queer desire. A total of 287 registrants of the British Psychoanalytic Council (BPC) completed a clinical attitudes questionnaire, a 20% response rate. The quantitative and qualitative data were descriptively and thematically analysed. Using a purposive sampling technique, 36 analytic/Jungian therapists were interviewed. A Framework Analysis identified 10 overarching themes. Analytic/Jungian therapists are now better informed about some LGB/queer-specific issues, such as internalised homophobia/biphobia and the challenges of living in a heterosexually structured society, but many continue to hold predominantly heteronormative and monosexual perspectives on love, relationships and sex. Some thinking and clinical practice with LGB/queer clients remains biased, out-dated and potentially harmful. Despite some innovation and progress, not all trainings adequately cover LGB/queer-specific issues, and anti-LGB/queer discrimination persists at some training organisations. UK analytic/Jungian training organisations must continue their efforts to create non-discriminatory learning and professional environments for LGB/queer individuals. This may involve further revision of the analytic/Jungian curriculum on same-sex/queer desire and institutional reform consistent with BPC equality and non-discrimination policies.

This study explores the impact of utilizing the mother tongue on psychologists' acquisition of proficiency in the Ullman's experiential dreamwork group approach. Employing a qualitative ethnographic methodology, the research documents the immersive training experiences within the Ullman approach, subject to subsequent analysis, by a Muslim clinical psychologist in training, whose native language is Arabic, engaging in the experiential dreamwork conducted in English. The findings confirms the pivotal role of the mother tongue in fostering group cohesion and facilitating emotional processing within the Ullman framework. Furthermore, the research underscores the significance of language in shaping the holistic learning experience, emphasizing the imperative consideration of linguistic and cultural implications inherent in this distinctive training process for clinical psychologists. A nuanced understanding of the impact of language on experiential learning enhances our comprehension of the intricate interplay between language, emotions and personal development among trainees in clinical psychology. Beyond individual learning encounters, the research prompts a broader contemplation on the incorporation of linguistic and cultural factors in the training of clinical psychologists.

This study provides an account of the way shame, intrusion or other adverse experiences in early childhood can prevent genuine identification with an ego-ideal, which is felt to be a burden. I argue that the ego-ideal is necessary to impel the individual towards continual growth and that its absence vitiates the formation of a durable ego. The paper points out the consequences for the subject, which include incapacitation of the ego and the desire to circumvent life.

Whereas the therapeutic action centres on emotional participation and containment of the patient's intolerable experiences, the supervisory action centres on interpreting the reconstructed therapeutic reality. Since the emergent interpretation is subjective and contextual, it requires processing in a dialogue between the supervisor and the supervisee. However, their existential need to define and assert themselves as professionals often urges them to highlight the differences between their perceptions and beliefs and keenly convince each other. Uncontained, this dialectical tension might disrupt the supervisory process and the participants' well-being. Despite the existential urges, when the supervisor and the supervisee recognize and validate each other as independent and autonomous professionals, they can restrain their competitiveness, maintain a productive dialectical dialogue, achieve creative and integrated understandings of the therapeutic process and consolidate their professional identities. Moreover, despite the hierarchical supervisory relationship, acknowledging their vulnerability helps supervisors recognize and validate their supervisees and facilitate the dialectical supervisory dialogue.

This paper proposes a Lacanian theory of shame linked to the era of Lacan's work starting with Seminar X and the invention of the object a. From a Lacanian perspective, shame is not evoked by the exposure of a deficit, but rather by the exposure and witnessing of the divided subject's constitutive lack. This paper proposes that the affect of shame is an index pointing to the divided subject's structural lack when it is exposed and witnessed by object a instantiated as the gaze of the scopic drive and the voice of the invocatory drive. Since shame can freeze speech as well as provoke flight from the analytic work, we suggest that it is helpful for the clinician to understand how the structure of shame manifests in the patient's speech and in the transference. Clinical examples are given throughout. The paper concludes with a case discussion of Lacanian analytic work with a female patient confronted with multiple existential dilemmas that evoked shame in relationship to her body, sexuality and death.