– MARK BLECHNER – Bigenderism and Bisexuality
– ATTÀ NEGRI – Freedom, Goodness, Power, and Belonging: The Semantics of Phobic, Obsessive-Compulsive, Eating, and Mood Disorders
– ROZ CARROLL – “The Blood-Dimmed Tide”: Witnessing War and Working with the Collective Body in Authentic Movement
– MALIN FORS and NANCY MCWILLIAMS – Collaborative Reading of Medical Records in Psychotherapy: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Proposal about Narrative and Empowerment
– JILL GENTILE – What is Special about Speech?

Bigenderism and Bisexuality

By Mark Blechner (USA)

Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Volume 51, Number 3, p. 503-522, 2015.

The term “bigender” is proposed to describe people who combine male and female gender identities. Bigenderism is to be distinguished from “bisexuality” whose meaning would be limited to sexual attraction to both sexes. This change in terminology allows for more precise theory and clinical formulations, since some cases of bigenderism have been mistakenly identified as transgender. The relationship between gender identity and sexual orientation is discussed in the classification schemes of Kinsey, F. Klein, and Krafft-Ebing, and in some cases described by contemporary clinicians. Irrational ideas about bisexuality and bigender, and the way they inform understanding of transference and countertransference, are identified and analyzed.

Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00107530.2015.1060406?journalCode=uucp20

Mark J. Blechner, PhD
145 Central Park West
New York, NY 10023  USA
Website: www.markblechner.com
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Freedom, Goodness, Power, and Belonging: The Semantics of Phobic, Obsessive-Compulsive, Eating, and Mood Disorders

By Attà Negri (Italy)

Journal of Constructivist Psychology, Volume 28, Number 4, p. 293-315, 2015.

Authors: Valeria Ugazio, Attà Negri, and Lisa Fellin

Are the semantics of “freedom,” “goodness,” “power,” and “belonging” characteristic of the stories narrated in psychotherapy by individuals respectively with phobic, obsessive-compulsive, eating, and mood disorders? To verify this hypothesis, put forward by Ugazio’s model of semantic polarities, the Family Semantics Grid (FSG) was applied to the transcripts of 120 individual video-recorded systemic therapy sessions, the first two sessions carried out with 60 patients with phobic (12), obsessive-compulsive (12), eating (12), and mood (12) disorders, as well as asymptomatic patients (12) with existential problems who made up the comparison group. The results confirm the hypothesis. All but one patient were correctly assigned to their diagnostic group only by drawing on their narrated semantics. The semantics alone, therefore, seemed capable of defining the correct diagnostic group to which each patient belonged. We suggest considering the semantics as contextual and cultural diagnostic dimensions, expressions of not only the bonds but also the resources of people, and above all as useful for a diagnosis aimed at fostering processes of transformation and change.

Link:  http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10720537.2014.951109?journalCode=upcy20

Attà Negri, PhD
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali
Università di Bergamo
Piazzale S.Agostino, 2
24129 Bergamo  Italy
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“The Blood-Dimmed Tide”: Witnessing War and Working with the Collective Body in Authentic Movement

By Roz Carroll (UK)

Psychotherapy and Politics International, Volume 13, Number 3, p. 194-208, 2015.

This article considers how the impact of witnessing war, violence, and news of sexual abuse, as well as processing these themes in clinical work, can be mediated through the practice of Authentic Movement in a group setting. Dramatic movement stories narrate both the author’s journey into the underworld and the processing of the visceral impact of violence in the embodiment of the self-states of victim, bystander, rescuer and perpetrator. Set in a reflexive discussion of the collective body, politics, trauma theory, and Aristotle’s concepts of catharsis and pity, this article concludes with the acknowledgement that the role of a witnessing community is vital.

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppi.1360/abstract

Roz Carroll
UKCP Registered psychotherapist and supervisor, MA (Cantab)
The Minster Centre, Queen’s Park
London, UK
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Collaborative Reading of Medical Records in Psychotherapy: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Proposal about Narrative and Empowerment

By Malin Fors (Norway) and Nancy McWilliams (USA)

Psychoanalytic Psychology, Volume 33, Number 1, p. 35-57, 2016.

The authors explore the undertheorized question of sharing patients’ medical records as part of the therapeutic process in psychoanalytic psychotherapies. They argue that, especially with more seriously disturbed patients and those with significant personality disorders, collaborative inspection of such records can strengthen the therapeutic alliance, increase mutual understanding of the patient’s problems, support the patient’s self respect, and contribute to a sense of emancipation and personal empowerment. Feminist writing about the ethics of power relationships, attention to the possibilities for misuse of power in the psychoanalytic situation, clinical and anecdotal reports of the consequences of sharing medical records, and relevant empirical investigations are considered in the context of exploring numerous aspects of mutual attention to the patient’s records, both current and past. Material from the treatment of a woman with borderline personality organization and a history of destructive enactments is presented in the context of theorizing the value of looking with patients at their medical files. The authors consider potential problems and limitations of collaborative record-reading and share recommendations about integrating that process with the goals of psychotherapy.

Link (open access): http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/pap/33/1/35.pdf&uid=2015-27298-001&db=PA

Malin Fors, MSc
Finnmark Hospital Trust
District Psychiatric Center
Vest-Finnmark, Hammerfest  Norway
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Nancy McWilliams, PhD
Rutgers University Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology
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What is Special about Speech?

By Jill Gentile (USA)

Psychoanalytic Psychology, Volume 33, Number 1, p. 73-88, 2016.

Sigmund Freud sustained a commitment to his scientific dream for psychoanalysis, but remained more conflicted about his “liberal” dream, his quest for individual emancipation born of truth-seeking discourse. Yet both dreams drew inspiration from an Enlightenment ethos of experimentation, with a quintessentially human ingredient: free speech. The American Founding Fathers, prior to Freud but similarly influenced by Enlightenment roots, also sustained an ethos of experimentation with free speech—the exercise of which was seen as essential to human (individual and collective) liberty. While most arguments defending the special status of speech appeal to the tenets of Enlightenment philosophy, neither psychoanalysis nor democracy has a well-articulated theory of why speech is accorded a privileged status. But both did establish fundamental rules that instantiated a bounded space of ambiguity for the unbounded exercise of free speech and truthful discourse. By so doing, psychoanalysis and democracy, by enabling the primacy of speech, both joined experimental and hermeneutic aspects, scientific and liberal dreams, and empiricist and emancipatory truths; and both remain mutually relevant despite having seldom been treated as such.

Link: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/pap/33/1/73/

Jill Gentile, Ph.D.
26 West 9th Street, Suite 10A
New York, NY 10011
307 Raritan Avenue
Highland Park, NJ  08904
USA
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Website: http://tinyurl.com/jillgentile