Editorial
Enikő Albert-Lőrincz
ARTICLES
Overview
Roger Csáky-Pallavicini, András Ittzés, János Harmatta, László Egri, Tünde Szabó, Teodóra Tomcsányi: Serving man — and thinking about it from point of view of mental health promotion. Are pastoral counsellors different?
Historical study
Hans-Volker Werthmann: Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Stekel on understanding dreams (translation: István Ormay)
Questions of practice
Katalin Bálint, György Bárdos: The psychotherapeutic aspects of physical contact
“Pearls”
György Vikár: The psychology of artistic (literary) creation from a psychoanalytic perspective
PROFESSIONAL LIFE
Conferences — Anikó Hazag, Klára Horváth • Zsuzsanna Jáki, Glavákné Csilla Várszegi • Zsuzsa Kaló • Melinda Kovai
Lists of professional books
On the 4th Conference of this journal
Book reviews — Béla Buda • Béla Birkás • Katalin Futó • Horváthné Ilona Schmidt • Tamás Treuer
Curved mirror
Gábor Flaskay: Angling in the mirror of psychoanalytic theories
Professional programs
Abstracts
Overview
Roger Csáky-Pallavicini, András Ittzés, János Harmatta, László Egri, Tünde Szabó, Teodóra Tomcsányi:
Serving man — and thinking about it from the point of view of mental health promotion.
Are pastoral counsellors different?
In our age the possible ways to help in the treatment of mental and social problems keep broadening. The helping activity of the professional pastoral counsellors is a type of specialised work, which serves mental health and is in some cases psychotherapeutic. Counsellors’ qualification includes development of self-knowledge and of one’s own personal maturing, and knowledge how to treat people with special problems in individual and group setting. Together with the cooperation of other universities, the Institute of Mental Health of Semmelweis University has established a pastoral counsellor postgraduate training for those with a degree in theology.
This study, following an attempt to define the concepts of pastoral counselling and counsellor, highlights the specialities of the work in pastoral counselling. By describing the working conditions and scope of activities of pastoral counselling and by giving case examples it points out the qualitative difference in the work of pastoral counsellors promoting mental health.
By presenting concrete cases, we find it important to focus on the distinction between the role, the scope of activities and competencies of a pastoral counsellor and those in other helping professions and in psychotherapy. In our research of pastoral counselling in hospitals, we asked not only about the expectations, but whether the respondents had experienced any difference between the work of a priest/minister and a pastoral counsellor, as well as between the work of a psychologist and a pastoral counsellor. At the end of our study we present the results of this research.
Historical study
Hans-Volker Werthmann: Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Stekel on understanding dreams (translation: István Ormay)
Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Stekel on understanding dreams
Wilhelm Stekel was one of the most important pioneers of early psychoanalysis. He was the founder of the so called Wednesday society and became the most ardent propagandist of Freud and psychoanalysis in Austrian and German journals. His ten-volume “Die Störungen des Trieb- und Affektlebens (die parapathischen Erkrankungen)“ was most influential in German and English speaking countries. After his excommunication by Freud in 1912 he was no longer quoted or discussed by the mainstream psychoanalysts and was nearly forgotten. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in Stekel. – The author presents a sketch of Stekel´s biography. Concerning the interpretation of dreams Stekel stressed the importance of symbolism in the manifest content of the dream, which is demonstrated by examples of Stekel´s symbols of death. Intuition versus science seemed to be a main controversial point between Stekel and Freud.
Questions of practice
Katalin Bálint, György Bárdos: The psychotherapeutic aspects of physical contact
The use of touch in psychotherapy has been controversial since Freud’s touch taboo. Others of his generation (Ferenczi, Reich, Bálint) emphasized the importance of using touch in healing and said that physical contact can communicate very significant human messages even with its absence. In our research, we set out to find what is the essence of the psychologists’ decisions, experiences and beliefs regarding the use of touch with psychotherapy clients. The format of our research was a semi-structured interview designed to discover the meaning of touching their clients for clinical psychologists.
“Pearls”
György Vikár: The psychology of artistic (literary) creation from a psychoanalytic perspective
The training of psychoanalysts got a serious impetus in Hungary in the nineteen eighties.
Psychoanalytic literature in Hungarian language needed enriching. Lectures of the Psychotherapeutic Section of the Hungarian Psychiatric Association was meant to serve that purpose. The Section had several working groups, the Hungarian Association of Psychoanalysts among them. The lectures were published in the form of duplicated notebooks that are impossible to get hold of today, and a few of them are treasured in libraries.
György Vikár (1926-2003) psychoanalyst, child psychotherapist’s lecture below belonged to the series. This psychoanalytic interpretation of art would have served well in the 2007 conference of the Hungarian Association of Psychoanalysts.
The text is given in its original. The Editor