Issue 6 – December 2014

Editorial

István Tiringer

 

ARTICLES

Questions of practice

Györgyi Beleznai, Ágnes Gyírkis: „What kind of mother am I, what kind of mother could I be to my handicapped child?” Mother-child relationship in the frame of a developing, psychotherapeutic group

Questions of practice

Anna Dobossy: Forgotten patients

Work study

Ferenc Süle: Search for the common denominator of spirituality, human specificity and religions

Essay study

Gábor Szőnyi: Will a unified psychotherapy come into being? Considerations on the approachability of psychotherapies I

 

PROFESSIONAL LIFE

Portrait

Ágnes F. Merényi, Zoltán Fehérváry (eds.): Remembering Dénes Goldschmidt

Discussions, comments

Debate: Being formal or informal? How to address each other in a therapeutic setting or during a consultation – Zsolt Deák ¨ Ilona Erős ¨ Sinkó Dóra

Ethical questions in therapeutic practice 11. – János Harmatta ¨ Judith Székelyhidi

News

Reports

Conferences – Gyöngyi Ajtay, Kinga Fodor ¨ János Igács ¨ Simon Sarolta ¨ Mária Tornyossy ¨ Lili Valkó

Book reviews – Noémi Berger ¨ Anna Mária Hansjürgens ¨ Gábor Szőnyi

Lists of professional books and periodicals

Professional programs

Editorial announcements


Abstracts

 

 

Questions of practice

„What kind of mother am I, what kind of mother could I be to my handicapped child?”

Mother-child relationship in the frame of a developing, psychotherapeutic group.

Györgyi Beleznai, Ágnes Gyírkis

The participants of our group were children with severe injuries between the ages of 6 months to 2 years showing significant differences between their chronological and mental age, and their mothers. The main point of the selection was that a spectacular deficit had appeared in the mother-child relationship, beside the severity of the injury. According to our experiences this deficit held back the development of the child, and could not be solved satisfactorily by the lessons on early development.

Regarding this, we started a psychotherapeutic group focusing on the mother-child relationship. In the group we used special educational and psychological methods as well, supplementing each other. Our purpose was to reconstruct the injured metallization process between mother and child, recover communication deficits, and rebuild the confidence in the mother-child relationship. There were 4-5 permanent parent-child couples participating in the process. They could experience changes in their relationship from week to week, due to the development, feelings they had gone through and shared with each other, interferences and representation. In this study we present surprising changes even for us, focusing on one mother-child dyad.

Key words:

Early developing – children with severe injuries – deficit in the mother- child relationship –injured metallization process – special education developing group using psychotherapeutic method


Questions of practice

Forgotten patients

Anna Dobossy

In most of the severe cases of personality disorder we find a disturbance of the early mother-infant relationship in the core. Specifically the mother has not been able to keep the baby in mind, to tune into him and to treat him as a separate person. As such, a growing child who has not had the experience of being remembered or kept alive in the mind of his mother will have never felt alive himself (Bach 2006). This sense of internal deadness will develop into an urge to disappear and a desire to be forgotten. His sense of self will remain in a weakened state meaning he will not have learned how to regulate his own emotions or anxieties. During the work with severely disturbed clients the authentic response of the therapist is what expresses containment of the patient’s difficult thoughts and emotions. This exchange gives rise to an experience for the patient of being seen, heard and remembered. Part of the authentic response requires that the therapist and patient enter into a space of shared experience from which the therapist can then withdraw to a safe internal space to formulate a digested and digestible response for his patient. In this paper I will introduce our way of working with patients in the therapeutic community and attempt to answer some related questions. Within the unique framework of the Arbours Association’s psychoanalytic therapeutic communities the facilitators will commonly spend all day with the patients. In the absence of the 50-minute session, how is a therapist able to retain their authenticity and internal boundaries? Does their authentic response come from the personal or professional self? How much should be shared of the therapist’s own thoughts and emotions? And with patients who are prone to psychotic breakdowns, does containing their conscious and unconscious psychic elements contribute towards a development of their sense of self?

Key words: Therapeutic community – authenticity – countertransference – holding – containing

 

Search for the common denominator of spirituality, human specificity and religions

Ferenc Süle

 

Our department took it on to provide hospital care and cure for psychiatric patients belonging to different religions and spiritual movements. At the beginning our work was made almost impossible by an extreme confusion of worldviews and theological concepts, which hindered clients’ communication with each other as well as the work with sociotherapy and psychotherapy. The psychology of Jung can interpret the basis of spirituality. Thus it became unavoidable to elaborate a common language and value system. This task was accomplished by reducing the problems and searching for common denominators. We traced back most problems to two main root factors. The first had to do with the essence of humanness, with the main driving force of the human personality. The second related to the final value system by which human behavior are judged. We located the first factor in the human aspiration for development in both the inner and outer life and in the need for community. The second factor was that in our department mutual help, the promotion of development and usefulness for the community came to be regarded the standards of behavior. Hereafter we used these standards as coordinates in our discussions. These made possible to work with psychotherapy as well as life in the therapeutic community. According to our experience involving the basic principles of spirituality in the healing process provided a simple, but creative basis for our psychiatric work. We succeed in creating a cooperation among the ill members of western and eastern religions, new religions and esoteric movements that made the work of psychotherapy and sociotherapy possible. We found our method in harmony with the essence of Christian spirituality.

 

Keywords: clinical religion psychology – ward psychotherapy – religion pathology – deep psychology – therapeutic community


Will a unified psychotherapy come into being?

Considerations on the approachability of psychotherapies I.

Gábor Szőnyi

Wish to create a unified psychotherapy, to build together the major methods, and to find the common factors turn up again and again. Parallel with that we face ongoing proliferation of methods and techniques.

The conference of the Hungarian CBT association inspired the author to review the questions we meet when thinking about rapprochement or unification. He considers two therapy families that of the CBT and the analytic-dynamic one.

This paper deals with the possibility of a unified psychotherapy, which will be continued with assessing the possibility of a unified training, in the next issue.

The author begins with outlining the main dimensions of rapprochement (technique, theoretical concepts, setting, strategy/attitude, area of application). We have to evaluate the possibility of coming together from each dimension. One of the author’s basic statements says that the two methods (therapy families) demand opposite therapeutic attitudes from many aspects, which practically prevents integration. At this point rapprochement turns into change of basic therapeutic attitude.

Evidence based psychotherapy promises common technique and knowledge through finding efficacy. Beside results the author also discusses limitations and side effects of the research approach: respect and application of psychotherapy decreased definitely in the last decade.

Study of practice moves more and more in the foreground. in case of unified psychotherapy unification makes the psychotherapist as well. Producer of competent psychotherapists is the training.

Key-words: integration possibility of psychotherapies – evidence based psychotherapy – practice based evidence – competence based practice – respect of psychotherapy

 

 

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