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Introduction Part 1
Published in Paul Ian Steinberg, Psychoanalysis in Medicine, 2020
Psychoanalysis is an intensive psychological “talk” therapy that explores the patient’s unconscious, in particular, her unconscious motivations for how she feels, thinks, and behaves. The unconscious does not consist just of what is unbearably terrifying and painful, and is therefore repressed outside of conscious awareness. It also contains what is joyful, creative, interesting, exciting, and fantastic, which an individual may have learned early in life was too threatening to, or just neglected by, someone important to them to tolerate experiencing and developing these qualities. This can result in an individual living her life in a sterile, unsatisfying manner, not realizing her potential in relationships, work, and recreational pursuits; that is, in work, love, and play. The unconscious also includes the mechanisms of defense we employ to remain unaware of what makes us anxious, especially regarding painful truths about ourselves. There are many parts of each of us that we can profitably explore and develop. When unconscious obstacles to growth are understood, felt, experienced, and lived, this can permit renewed growth, or growth that an individual never previously has experienced.
Major Schools of Psychology
Published in Mohamed Ahmed Abd El-Hay, Understanding Psychology for Medicine and Nursing, 2019
Psychoanalytic theory and practice originated in the late nineteenth century in the work of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). This offers a distinctive way of thinking about the human mind and of responding to psychological distress. Freud developed his theories about behavior through extensive analysis of the patients whom he treated in his private clinical practice.
The Use of Imagery in Alleviating Depression
Published in Anees A. Sheikh, Imagination and Healing, 2019
Psychological theories of depression have contributed to the development of various psychotherapeutic approaches toward the treatment of depression. Psychotherapeutic treatment of depression ranges from minimal, once-a-month supportive psychotherapy to intensive, five-times-a-week psychoanalysis. Such treatments can range in duration from brief, time-limited psychotherapy lasting two or three months to long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis lasting five to ten years or more. While supportive therapy aims at maintaining the patient’s level of functioning and preventing further relapse, psychoanalytic treatment is geared toward major personality reorganization. The former often focuses upon crisis intervention and upon helping the individual to develop improved coping mechanisms, while the latter usually holds out the hope of “total cure.”
Commentary. Freud in the stroke ward: psychodynamic theory for stroke rehabilitation professionals
Published in Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, 2023
Stroke rehabilitation is not psychotherapy, but it requires as full an understanding as possible of patients’ personalities and priorities. Particularly in an acute setting, time is limited. Rehabilitation almost always has to get underway without anything like an extensive psychological assessment. This is as it should be – stroke therapists get to know their patients in the same way that anybody gets to know anybody else, through discussion and rapport. Nonetheless it behooves us, in the limited time available, to get to know patients as well as possible. Psychoanalysis, with its central notion of an unconscious area in our mind, reminds us that people find some of their wishes and emotions unacceptable, and find ways to avoid acknowledging them. Many complications of rehab can be linked to an incomplete understanding of the patient, and might be avoided.
Waking Up in Someone Else’s Bed: On Ethos (Bir Başkadır), Netflix, Turkey, 2020
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2021
Psychoanalysis is only one of many systems of thinking that the characters rely on to order their worlds, obtain some certainty, and regulate their affective life and interpersonal relationships. “She doesn’t know how to give thanks to God,” says Meryem about her sister-in-law’s depression. Meanwhile, Peri believes that passionately falling in love is simply anima/animus projection. “Countertransference” is how Gülbin, Peri’s supervisor, describes Peri’s prejudice toward Meryem. “God wanted to take her,” says the Hodja (Islamic teacher), when he loses his wife, although a little later he does manage to access his grief, crying in a childlike way. Hilmi, who is involved in the local mosque, has just discovered Jung, and will talk to anyone who is willing to listen (and to some who are not) about him. His prolonged Jungian spiel to his friends is only momentarily interrupted by becoming mesmerized by Meryem walking past. Thinking is juxtaposed with feeling, or even enchantment, in ways that Jung does have something to say about, especially in his Red Book. Anyone who has ever felt that a newly discovered political school of thought, religion, philosophy, or psychological theory can explain almost everything around them will recognize themselves in Hilmi.
Harry Stack Sullivan and Interpersonal Theory: A Flawed Genius
Published in Psychiatry, 2020
Sullivan became very close friends and collaborated with the cultural anthropologists Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict, and the political scientist Harry Laswell. Sullivan was also in close dialogue with Erich Fromm and Karen Horney, who in different ways were also very interested in understanding how culture impacts personality development. He borrowed many concepts from some of his social science colleagues such as “participant observation,” the term cultural anthropologists used to describe their role doing fieldwork. Sullivan himself did some fieldwork with black male adolescents in Mississippi and Tennessee in collaboration with Charles Johnson. The work was published in a book Growing up in the Black Belt (Johnson, 1941). The description of the role of the therapist as a participant-observer was a clear departure from the prevailing view of a psychoanalyst as being an objective, neutral and expert interpreter of the unconscious. Being a participant in the process one cannot remain aloof or detached, but one can (with difficulty and training) learn to become a reflective practitioner. In creating the Washington School of Psychiatry, Sullivan had the dream of a program that could integrate social sciences with the study of psychiatry, defined as the field of study of interpersonal relations.