Is there still a place for the concept of therapeutic regression in psychoanalysis?

The author uses his own failure to find a place for the idea of therapeutic regression in his clinical thinking or practice as the basis for an investigation into its meaning and usefulness. He makes a distinction between three ways the term ‘regression’ is used in psychoanalytic discourse: as a way of evoking a primitive level of experience; as a reminder in some clinical situations of the value of non-intervention on the part of the analyst; and as a description of a phase of an analytic treatment with some patients where the analyst needs to put aside normal analytic technique in order to foster a regression in the patient. It is this third meaning, which the author terms “therapeutic regression” that this paper examines, principally by means of an extended discussion of two clinical examples of a patient making a so-called therapeutic regression, one given by Winnicott and the other by Masud Khan. The author argues that in these examples the introduction of the concept of therapeutic regression obscures rather than clarifies the clinical process. He concludes that, as a substantial clinical concept, the idea of therapeutic regression has outlived its usefulness. However he also notes that many psychoanalytic writers continue to find a use for the more generic concept of regression, and that the very engagement with the more particular idea of therapeutic regression has value in provoking questions as to what is truly therapeutic in psychoanalytic treatment

Interactional positioning and narrative self-construction in the first session of psychodynamic-interpersonal psychotherapy

The purpose of this study is to identify possible session one indicators of end of treatment psychotherapy outcome using the framework of three types of interactional positioning; client’s self-positioning, client’s positioning between narrated self and different partners, and the positioning between client and therapist. Three successful cases of 8-session psychodynamic-interpersonal (PI) therapy were selected on the basis of client Beck Depression Inventory scores. One unsuccessful case was also selected against which identified patterns could be tested. The successful clients were more descriptive about their problems and demonstrated active rapport-building, while the therapist used positionings expressed by the client in order to explore the positionings developed between them during therapy. The unsuccessful case was characterized by lack of positive self-comment, minimization of agentic self-capacity, and empathy-disrupting narrative confusions. We conclude that the theory of interactional positioning has been useful in identifying patterns worth exploring as early indicators of success in PI therapy

Negotiating daughterhood and strangerhood: retrospective accounts of serial migration

Most considerations of daughtering and mothering take for granted that the subjectivities of mothers and daughters are negotiated in contexts of physical proximity throughout daughters’ childhoods. Yet many mothers and daughters spend periods separated from each other, sometimes across national borders. Globally, an increasing number of children experience life in transnational families. This paper examines the retrospective narratives of four women who were serial migrants as children (whose parents migrated before they did) . It focuses on their accounts of the reunion with their mothers and how these fit with the ways in which they construct their mother-daughter relationships. We take a psychosocial approach by using a psychoanalytically-informed reading of these narratives to acknowledge the complexities of the attachments produced in the context of migration and to attend to the multi-layered psychodynamics of the resulting relationships. The paper argues that serial migration positioned many of the daughters in a conflictual emotional landscape from which they had to negotiate ‘strangerhood’ in the context of sadness at leaving people to whom they were attached in order to join their mothers (or parents). As a result, many were resistant to being positioned as daughters, doing daughtering and being mothered in their new homes

Object Relations in the Museum: A Psychosocial Perspective

This article theorises museum engagement from a psychosocial perspective. With the aid of selected concepts from object relations theory, it explains how the museum visitor can establish a personal relation to museum objects, making use of them as an ‘aesthetic third’ to symbolise experience. Since such objects are at the same time cultural resources, interacting with them helps the individual to feel part of a shared culture. The article elaborates an example drawn from a research project that aimed to make museum collections available to people with physical and mental health problems. It draws on the work of the British psychoanalysts Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion to explain the salience of the concepts of object use, potential space, containment and reverie within a museum context. It also refers to the work of the contemporary psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas on how objects can become evocative for individuals both by virtue of their intrinsic qualities and by the way they are used to express personal idiom

Exploring young people's and youth workers' experiences of spaces for ‘youth development’: creating cultures of participation

The paper focuses on the emergence of ‘positive youth development’ and its impact on older, more established practices of working with young people, such as youth work. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in England between 2004 and 2006, in particular young people's and youth workers' accounts of participating in youth work, the analysis engages with the social spaces in which youth work takes place and asks key questions about why young people might participate in youth spaces, what they get out of participating and how such spaces can promote cultures of participation. The analysis shows that such spaces provide young people and their communities with biographical continuity and time becomes a key component for sustaining such spaces. The argument is made for a more nuanced understanding of what young people get out of their participation in youth spaces, and for an epistemological approach to youth praxis that embraces the messiness and inequalities of lived experience

Unconditional positive self-regard, intrinsic aspirations and authenticity: pathways to psychological well-being

Unconditional positive self-regard (UPSR) is regarded by humanistic psychologists as an important determinant of well-being. However, until recently it has received little empirical attention. The current study aims to examine the association between unconditional positive self-regard and several key constructs consistent with the ideas of well-being within contemporary positive psychology. Study 1 is a confirmatory factor analysis of the UPSR scale. The statistically significant best fit for the data was a related two-factor model. Study 2 used the two-factors of the UPSR scale to explore the association with intrinsic aspirations. The study showed positive self-regard was statistically significantly positively correlated with the intrinsic aspirations total scale and with each of the separate scores for IA-importance and IA-chance. Unconditionality of regard was statistically significantly negatively correlated with IA-importance but was not statistically significantly correlated to either the IA-total or IA-chance scores. Study 3 considers the association between UPSR, intrinsic aspirations and authenticity. Unconditionality of regard was statistically significantly positively correlated with the authenticity scale score. Only IA-chance scores showed a statistically significant and positive correlation with authenticity. The remaining correlations between intrinsic aspirations and authenticity were not statistically significant. Results call for further empirical attention to UPSR within positive psychology research

The transferencial relation beyond the interpretation : reflections from the theory of Winnicott.

Este artigo reflete sobre a importância de pensar a relação transferencial na clínica psicanalítica para além da interpretação. Para isso, utiliza-se a concepção de Winnicott como referencial teórico, sendo ressaltadas a noção de holding, a regressão à dependência e a questão do uso de objetos e sua influência sobre a técnica da interpretação. Winnicott revela que na clínica com alguns pacientes, em especial os autistas e psicóticos, o objetivo da análise, antes de fornecer interpretações, é proporcionar um ambiente suficientemente bom a partir do qual o sujeito pode retomar o processo de constituição de si mesmo e da externalidade do mundo.This article reflects about the importance of thinking the transferencial relation in the psychoanalytic clinic beyond the interpretation. For this, the Winnicott’s concept is used as theoretical reference, highlighting the concept of holding, regression to dependence and the question of the use of objects and its influence on the technique of interpretation. Winnicott shows that in the clinic, with some patients, particularly autistic and psychotic, before providing interpretation, the objective of the analysis is to provide a good environment from which the subject can retake the constitution process of himself/herself and of the externality of the world

Tactile Interactions with a Humanoid Robot : Novel Play Scenario Implementations with Children with Autism

Acknowledgments: This work has been partially supported by the European Commission under contract number FP7-231500-ROBOSKIN. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.The work presented in this paper was part of our investigation in the ROBOSKIN project. The project has developed new robot capabilities based on the tactile feedback provided by novel robotic skin, with the aim to provide cognitive mechanisms to improve human-robot interaction capabilities. This article presents two novel tactile play scenarios developed for robot-assisted play for children with autism. The play scenarios were developed against specific educational and therapeutic objectives that were discussed with teachers and therapists. These objectives were classified with reference to the ICF-CY, the International Classification of Functioning – version for Children and Youth. The article presents a detailed description of the play scenarios, and case study examples of their implementation in HRI studies with children with autism and the humanoid robot KASPAR.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio