British Journal of Psychotherapy最新文献

‘Modern psychoanalysis’ developed by Spotnitz, offers an approach to understanding excessive self-criticism focusing on the role of bottled-up frustration–aggression in its aetiology and proposing treatment aimed at overcoming resistance to the expression of aggression. Modern psychoanalysis purports aetiology to be in the pre-Oedipal period when the infant fails to direct aggressive impulses outwardly. The result is the narcissistic defence in which the person directs aggression towards the self to preserve the object. Treatment is designed to promote the patient's psychological maturation by encouraging the appropriate expression of aggression towards the analyst in the transference, employing techniques such as emotional communication. Familial issues are often a significant contributing factor; reconciliations with an actual bad parent are encouraged in cases in which a constructive emotional interchange is beneficial. Two extended clinical illustrations are presented.

This paper offers an interdisciplinary approach to negative capability and suffering in the analytic hour. First, I discuss the development that Bion proposes to this concept coined by the poet Keats. Then I analyse the concept's meaning in Keats' poetry, through his poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and propose a unique reading. I show how the poet precedes psychoanalysis in his understanding of mental life, by proposing deep inner authentic consent to accept his suffering while longing for negative capability during the act of creation. Finally, I argue that when attempts to understand the patient through transference and extra-transferential interpretations do not specify his emotional truth, the analyst's consent to bear the feeling of suffering as an attitude while in negative capability in the analytic hour may contribute to the analyst's stamina- therefore to more precise understanding of the patient's emotional truth through the analytic process. I show how this stance parallels that of Keats the poet: the analyst in a negative space of inner authentic consent to suffering – negative capability, communication of projective identification – while dedicating himself to discovering the patient's emotional truth during the analytic hour. The paper is accompanied by vignettes of analysis that demonstrate this idea.

Collective traumatic events such as hurricanes, wars and pandemics result in a series of devastating consequences for entire communities, not only in material terms, but also psychologically, politically and culturally. As the psychotherapist/psychoanalyst and patient are part of the same social group, it is understood that when faced with a misfortune of such magnitude both will be affected by its impact. This phenomenon is called shared trauma, an extraordinary, inevitable and multifaceted situation that will cross the intersubjective clinical scenario, mobilising feelings in the analytic pair and calling on the professional to rethink his practice. This article discusses the possible implications of shared trauma for the analytic field and suggests some ways of dealing with such situations. To construct this writing, a bibliographical review was carried out on trauma, shared trauma and the analytic field in psychoanalysis. Furthermore, some vignettes that were taken from semi-structured interviews with psychoanalysts who worked during the covid-19 pandemic will be presented to illustrate this study. Pubmed, Embase, PsycInfo, Scopus and VHL platforms served as search sources. Even though not all publications used in this research were based on psychoanalytic theory and experience, they contributed significantly. Through this investigation, we raise the hypothesis that working with psychoanalysis, more than an occupation, holds a structuring function that protects the psyche of its professionals.

This paper underscores the dual responsibility in psychoanalytic practice: addressing individual and societal traumas. Using Benjamin, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, as a case study, it advocates integrating societal traumas into psychoanalysis, moving beyond individual denial. Benjamin's journey, involving psychoanalysis and community support, highlights the importance of active engagement with trauma for post-memorial healing. The psychotherapist, in this case, plays a crucial role in witnessing and addressing intergenerationally transmitted trauma, fostering the patient's transformation and confronting their own historical connections to broader societal traumas.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy and autism have had a complicated relationship. Much of the complication has arisen from patients with autism being misunderstood by those who have used a psychoanalytic lens. These misunderstandings arose not for a lack of trying—but rather from a disavowal of how neurological difference shapes what it means to become a person, and how these differences affect treatment needs. It has been autistic patients who have had to bear the consequences of these misunderstandings in much the same way as they do in their daily lives outside of therapy. It is not the psychoanalytic lens that has failed these patients, but rather its use without reference to the ever-growing body of neurobiological knowledge. In this paper, we make the argument that many of the key psychoanalytic concepts—countertransference, the frame, narcissism, intellectualization and obsessions—need to be reviewed and altered when working with autistic patients.