Abstract: Research methods are often marked by inequalities between researcher and researched, maintained through dominant discourses that structure expectations of research. This study considers how therapeutic skills such as reflexivity can help to develop alternative discourses, raise awareness and challenge inequalities in research. An approach to the qualitative analysis of research interviews using interpersonal process recall (IPR) is outlined. By focusing attention on the dialogue and enabling researcher and research participant to review and explore their interaction reflexively, IPR offers an opportunity to understand interviews as intersubjective events. It thus facilitates the collaborative identification of processes and narratives as key moments for further analysis and increases awareness of the potential blurring of genres between therapeutic and research conversations. The contribution of IPR to an intersubjective lens and greater equality in research interviewing is discussed. Potential implicatio...

Abstract: Co-creating Change was justifiably the winner of the 2014 International Book Awards. Jon Frederickson takes the reader on a tour through the complexities of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychothera...

Abstract: run through it. One has to do with the concept of trauma, which appears in various guises in most chapters, reminding us that for the Ferenczian (and Independent) psychoanalytic traditions, trauma is arguably the key organising principle, replacing Freud’s emphasis on sexuality. The second thread running through this collection has to do with Ferenczi’s intense and painful relationship with Freud. In a way, the story of that relationship and particularly the story of its demise offer a key to thinking about these two very different traditions in psychoanalysis which run in parallel but arguably never touch: that of external trauma and that of libido and sexuality.

Abstract: feelings of superiority and invulnerability among the successful and lead to disdain for those deemed less successful. Moreover, as every gambler knows, even repeated success does not ensure continued success in future. By its very nature, success is capricious and those with a charmed track record of success sometimes live in fear of plummeting from a great height into the abyss of failure. Like Icarus, when they fall/fail, they fall/fail disastrously.

Abstract: Shaul Bar-Haim is a PhD candidate in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London. He completed his MA studies in modern history at Tel Aviv University. His current research is about the history of the psychoanalytic movement in mid-twentieth-century Britain, and its special role in defining and re-defining concepts of domesticity, motherhood, and welfarism.

Abstract: Sibling relationships are ambivalent. They are full of love and hate, and therefore, our most basic wish cannot simply be to get rid of our siblings. Many of the conflicts we find ourselves in, either with friends or within institutions, may need a complex and subtle understanding of sibling dynamics. The famous Controversial Discussions that nearly destroyed the Institute of Psychoanalysis in the early forties could be partly attributed to the unacknowledged and unconscious dynamics of the sibling transferences that swirled around Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and Freud. One of the tasks of therapists is to explore how we all must live within a society, with our contemporaries. This difficulty involves observing that sometimes in therapy we are part of the nursery quarrel itself, rather than superior. And so in adult sibling conflict within an institution, there may be a need for an outside moderator, like a parent, to sort out the quarrel; for when sibling passions are revived at work or in the consulting r...

Abstract: As a patient is starting to access emotion and comes back to feeling alive, they realise what they have been missing. (Ferrucio Ossimo, p. 227)It’s a bit difficult to describe, but it felt as thoug...

Abstract: Full disclosure. I am white: a white man from a middle-class background. In truth, though, I am not really white at all, certainly nowhere near the dazzling luminescence of, say, an ice floe or eve...

Abstract: This is a fascinating and important book written by a clinician with a deep interest in drug dependence and recovery. Colace starts from the premise that one of the biggest problems faced by addict...

Abstract: I examine dynamics of refusal and coercion in the reciprocal relationship between traumatised individuals suffering from severe forms of Anorexia Nervosa and fragmented systems of care engaged in the clinical endeavour of pressing food upon them. Inpatient services treating sufferers using various forms of force-feeding face the clinical challenge of refusal: refusal to eat – refusal to comply with treatment – ‘refusal to get better’. In this dynamic, the ‘irresistible force’ of compulsory treatment under the mental health act meets the ‘immovable object’ of the individual sufferer’s refusal to accept food and treatment on the terms offered. In writing this paper, I have worked alongside a small group of anonymous experts by experience. I take as my main ‘case material’ the story of Creon and Antigone, representing the societal ‘irresistible force’ and the individual ‘immovable object’. I explore some of the shared characteristics of present-day sufferers and I trace the history of the aesthetics of starv...

Abstract: Bruce Fink is arguably the foremost commentator and interpreter of Jacques Lacan’s work in the United States today, and the publication of a new set of commentaries and case vignettes by him foregr...

Abstract: Like so many creative endeavours, this book has emerged from a unique mix of passion, dedication and above all, a fierce commitment to showing that psychoanalytic clinicians work with a diverse ran...

Abstract: This book by Andrea Celenza is a welcome addition to the slowly expanding literature on working with the erotic transference and countertransference.The book was divided into two main sections: Par...

Abstract: This paper discusses the meaning of psychoanalytic faith as a useful developmental concept, which applies to the therapeutic process in the consulting room as to other intimate educational experiences. Faith is a concept which has been little considered in relation to psychoanalysis, partly owing to semantic confusion with ‘the Faith’ as in religious or psychoanalytic dogma, and partly owing to the difficulty of defining or describing what it is, outside accepted jargon. Yet, faith is traditionally the gateway to experiencing the unknown – a psychoanalytic goal-demanding negative capability. It is suggested that philosophy and poetry, where the concept is more familiar, can provide psychoanalytic parallels for this particular type of learning from experience. The viewpoints of Bion, Meltzer and Kierkegaard are taken as contributing to a picture of how, in the psychoanalytic session, there may be a developmental encounter between the infant (patient) and the infinite (the transference process, rather than ...

Abstract: On 5 August 1913, four days after Ernest Jones left Budapest after two months of analysis with Sandor Ferenczi, the latter wrote to Freud: ‘I miss him very much We have become intimate friends; I

Abstract: The author discusses a connection between the modern analysand’s experience of depth therapy and the Christian pilgrim’s experience of confession, penitence and transformation as described by Dante in his Divine Comedy. She looks at structure and order in the context of psychotherapy. Taking Adriana Mazzarella’s ‘In Search of Beatrice’ as a guide, she examines a Jungian interpretation of the poem as an analogy of therapeutic initiation. She explores the idea of cultural complexes via the study of the medieval world view as one distinct from our own. She demonstrates the way in which study of the Comedy unexpectedly helped her survive an experience of long-term psychotherapeutic work.

Abstract: While studying on the Masters in Psychodynamic Practice at Rewley House in Oxford, I was lured back into playing a sport that I had retired from – rugby. At the time, I felt I was making a transiti...

Abstract: There is a fear of failure emanating from the students I mentor at one of the universities in London. The possibility of failure sends a shudder through their bodies; red-rimmed eyes are cast down;...

Abstract: This paper examines the prospects for real/actual love as viewed from a classical psychoanalytic framework It is argued that Freud’s prescient and controversial 1914 work On Narcissism: An Introduction holds great importance for an understanding of his views on love, which in many ways were never explicitly defined After the concepts of narcissism and love are considered, the aim, process, consequences and specific choices of object love are analysed Perhaps not surprisingly, both narcissism and the residue of infantile love objects permeate and continually influence subsequent object love in a powerful manner These perseverations of the infantile, along with impediments arising from the beloved, society and the self, create a number of difficulties for a would-be lover Despite these hindrances from both within and without, real/actual love is certainly possible within Freud’s framework, but it is hard won and appears to require the dispelling of illusions, emancipation through recognition of one’s d

Abstract: Graham Music’s book gathers together a great deal of evidence from recent research literatures with the aim of answering the questionsAre we born selfish or primed to help others?Does stress make p...

Abstract: Introductory Lectures on Lacan, the new addition to the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research Library series (published by Karnac), delivers what its title promises, precisely a collection of l...

Abstract: In this, the latest of Karnac’s Developmental Psychology Series, Rodriguez de la Sierra and Schachter offer a concise, psychoanalytically informed account of late adolescence, which they define as ...

Abstract: Despite a widespread focus on dementia – a focus on cause, care and cure – in both the media and on the agenda of policy makers, it is not always clear what is understood about the relational field in professional dementia care. This article draws on ideas that have their origins in psychoanalysis as a way in to exploring the affective and bodily encounters that can take place in a residential care setting. Informed by the work of Klein, Bion and Ettinger, the article sets out to demonstrate how connections between the professional carer and the cared-for are sometimes made, unmade and remade, and where at times the figure of the maternal might emerge in relationship to the other or to the wider organisation. Combining theory with observational vignettes, taken from an ongoing organisational study, the article suggests that to approach the work of relating from a psychoanalytical perspective can both enliven care practice and generate curiosity towards the other, both at an organisational and individual l...

Abstract: ‘A hallmark of relational psychoanalysis’, notes Susie Orbach early in her chapter, ‘is that there is no “off the shelf” understanding of what is happening in the consulting room between patient an...

Abstract: The Topic of Cancer is dedicated ‘to all whose lives are touched by cancer’. I was struck by the gentleness of that word ‘touch’, and how it is so different from the usual, more strident discourses...

Abstract: How can we think about or imagine the psychoanalytic universe in which we work, think, organise and speak? How can we make sense of a universe of discourse that includes id psychology, object relations, neuropsychoanalysis and existential analysis, and all of the Freudian, Jungian, Kleinian, Lacanian and Kohutian tendencies and their neo- and post- versions? What sort of historiography will help us to orient ourselves? Is there an approach to the history of psychoanalysis that will serve the interests of historical accuracy and heuristic possibility?

Abstract: Jan Abram has established an enviable reputation as an authority on Winnicott through her work as Director of the Squiggle Foundation (1996–2000), her book The Language of Winnicott: A Dictionary o...

Abstract: They say that no one ever sends a postcard from beyond the grave. As far as I know, this is true. But what about from after retirement? As one who is retired, I thought I would send a postcard back, as it were, from beyond the abyss, or at least a wave to those of you still on the other side. And I can confess to feeling some envy of you who haven’t crossed over yet; you are still doing that thing I enjoyed doing so much, you still have the privilege of those special, intimate relationships with people, which are unlike any other. At the same time, I can also confess to feeling a little triumphant. I’ve done this painful and difficult thing which you have yet to do, namely retiring as a psychotherapist. If it’s so difficult, why do it? Well, like life, it does have to end sometime. It has not escaped my notice that in my first paragraph, I was using language which was connected with the idea of death, as though I had experienced a kind of death, and there are echoes. But to return to my topic, why retire from this very special work? It is partly a question of responsibility. I had seen too many colleagues carrying on too long, literally falling asleep on the job. One had the feeling they were carrying on because they couldn’t bear to stop, meeting their own needs rather than those of the patient, and avoiding what might emerge by time not being filled up by seeing patients. How often have colleagues replied to the query as to how they are, ‘Oh far too busy of course’ – with apparently little awareness of the defensiveness of that response. Jeremy Holmes, in a talk to the Oxford Psychotherapy Society, once called work an antidepressant; and asked the question, what happens when we stop taking the antidepressants? Most of us, perhaps all, come into this work because of early wounds. Junkers (Junkers, 2013) asserts ‘Personal discussions with colleagues have persuaded me that our choice of profession is influenced by early mental suffering that disrupts our “continuity of being” (Winnicott, 1960, p. 591)’ (p. 18). Our own analysis opens up both understanding of those wounds and, through increased self-awareness, as well as the experience of a different way

Abstract: For someone like me, who is greatly interested in Lacanian theory and practice but by no means a Lacan scholar, the last few years have provided some exciting publications. Leader (2011), Vanheule ...