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What is intimacy? With psychologist and psychoanalyst Stephen Blumenthal
No full textIt’s only in the last few years that I’ve really looked into intimacy and what it actually, practically, means. A lot of people use it as a by-word for sex but here’s where it gets interesting because intimacy and sex aren’t the same thing. In fact a lot of people use sex to avoid intimacy.
Stephen Blumenthal and I discuss what is and isn’t intimacy, how to know if you’ve got it and maybe, how to find it if it’s so far eluded you. Stephen is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst , accredited by the British Psychoanalytic Council. He has specialist expertise in treating people who have problems with relationships and intimacy, difficulty expressing emotions, sex addiction and compulsive use of pornography
Contemporary child psychotherapy: Integration and imagination in creative clinical practice
No full textContemporary Child Psychotherapy: Integration and Imagination in Creative Clinical Practice demonstrates the step-by-step process of developing the depth of understanding, creativity, knowledge and skill that underpin a modern integrative child psychotherapist. Portrayed is a flexible model that is fluid and evolving, bringing together traditional, long-held ideas with fresh perspectives and up-to-date research. In bringing together psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory, trauma theories, the arts and creativity, neuroscience and the body, a rich framework is created. From this, the individual integrative child psychotherapist can choose the interventions which best foster the emotional development of each unique child and their parents today
The Tiger Skin on the Bannister (and Other Stories): Internal Dialogues and Parallel Autobiographical Process in a Reading of Wilfred Bion’s The Long Weekend, 1897–1919: Part of a Life
No full textThis essay presents excerpts from a reading of the section ‘England’ in Wilfred Bion’s autobiography The Long Weekend, 1897–1919: Part of a Life. Findings are now presented alongside a series of the reader’s own memories that were evoked, at varied speeds, both during and after the reading process. Drawing on the fields of infant observation and child psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the essay demonstrates how exercising an observational stance to the reader's own subjective material and subsequent, reflexive internal dialogues contributed to penetrating layers of meaning of the book. Furthermore, it aims to show how a reading of an autobiography unexpectedly enabled a powerful, parallel creative process within the reader
Is there a doctor in the house? Systems-psychodynamic research into general practitioners' experiences of changes in healthcare delivery
No full textMy qualitative research uses a psychosocial approach to explore GPs' experiences during changes in healthcare delivery prior to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The challenges of running everyday general practice under the neoliberal paradigm meant that GPs were retiring early, and that new GPs were hard to recruit. Even before March 2020, the biopsychosocial model of medicine was contending with many complexities, including workforce shortages, an ageing population, increasing incidence of chronic comorbidity, and the development of clinical technologies, to name but a few. General practice is also challenged by the requirements of commissioning, bidding, and contracting in order to sustain income and viability. What defines GPs' primary tasks, roles, and systems, and how are GPs' motivations and identities affected by this situation of clinical complexity and financial challenge? My research reveals three types of GP and an ecosystem's model of the organisationin-the-mind, involving various social defences and valencies for individual and group functioning
Understanding the impact of Child Sexual Abuse with consultant psychiatrist in psychotherapy Dr Jo Stubley
No full textThis is not an easy subject, but a necessary one, especially when you hear the statistics on child sexual abuse. Many children don't understand what's happening to them and often can't talk about it until they are way into adult hood and what they perceive to be a 'safe place'. The impact, as we see in this episode, can be life long and pernicious.
I talk to consultant psychiatrist in psychotherapy Dr Jo Stubley who leads the adult section of the trauma service at the NHS Tavistock Centre. Jo is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society and also took part in our trauma episode in series one (do listen to this if you haven't already). We talk about what grooming is, how to look out for it (an abuser grooms not just their victim but often the whole family), how to look out for signs that your child may be experiencing abuse and if you're a survivor of non recent child sexual abuse we hope you can find something in this episode to make you feel less alone
The tightrope of hope and despair: Our reflections on significant moments in a physical health training clinic
No full text• How do we provide a space for both/and in physical and mental health?
• How do we provide a specialist service for such a complex diverse client group?
• How do we provide a space for reasonable hope
"How have child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapists experienced and understood the role of social identity in training, and how might this relate to their practice?"
Get PDFReferences to social identity feature prominently in the psychoanalytic canon but generally receive little attention or discussion. This qualitative research study aims to examine the role of social identity in the training of child and adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapists by exploring how it has been experienced and understood, and how this role relates to therapeutic practice. It investigates this topic via a literature review and 12 interviews with psychotherapist members of the Association of Child Psychotherapy (ACP). The literature shows how the exclusion of critical or reflexive approaches to learning about healing creates tension when encountering social identity references harmful to non-normative or non-conforming people. Of the most prominent of these references, females, 'negroes', 'homosexuals', and the religious are all designated as inferior and labelled 'primitive' – terminology still habitually used in UK psychoanalytic contexts. I draw on Black Feminist Care Ethics, Social Anthropological and Sociological epistemologies attentive to forms of symbolic violence and the need for ‘participant objectivation’. This provides a historically contextualised, cross-disciplinary review of the above terminology, its accompanying ideologies and existing research. This explores how individuals make sense of particular aspects of identity, accompanied by psychoanalytically focused studies considering the dynamic between trainees’ social identities and the task of developing a professional/psychoanalytic identity. The results of Thematic Analysis represented social identity as holding 3 distinct roles: insufficient, sufficient and ambivalent. The first two roles are opposed, correlating distinctly with the degrees that participants’ social identifications were normative and conforming. The ambivalent role involved more complexity in that it was experienced across all participants’ trainings. This, highlights variation within identity groups and within individuals’ understandings and experiences of navigating training, on account of their social identities. These findings suggest that psychoanalytic training and psychotherapeutic practice would benefit, ethically and epistemically, from an authentic reckoning with the legacy of the very particular relation to social identity that has prevailed until now. Such a 'turn' may foster a new relation, less beholden to the uncritical embrace of normative ideologies and disavowal of vulnerability
On the lateral axis: A Systems-Psychodynamic study of the lateral relations of collaboration amongst senior leaders in corporate organizations
Get PDFThis thesis studies the dynamics of lateral collaboration in corporate organizations by
focusing on how senior leaders experience lateral relations in such contexts.
Increased business complexity and the nature of organizational challenges require
enterprise collaboration across boundaries, where leaders cannot exercise their
formal hierarchical authority. This research is an in-depth mapping of lateral relations
and the dynamics they induce. It studies the inner experience of role-holders. It allows
those leading and studying organizations to consider enabling conditions for
enterprise collaboration at a senior leadership level.
The study comprises four independent cases of senior leaders, using the biographical
narrative interpretive method (BNIM). Each in-case analysis surfaces subjective inner
relational and authority models that influence the subjective experience and choices
of a role-holder within lateral relations. Discerning patterns in dynamics and
experiences across cases allowed the development of an ontological picture of lateral
relations in leadership that could be studied independently.
The findings showed three distinct phenomena of relational dynamics: mental ranking
(MR), relational dimension confusion (RDC) and relational morphing (RM). Studying
their causation produced a definition of the attributes of lateral relations and the
evolved nature of formal authority in contemporary organizations. These findings can
aid leaders and organizational practitioners to navigate challenging dynamics and
contextualize their experience, whilst becoming more task effective in collaboration.
Finally, the thesis places these findings within the historical evolution of systems psychodynamic thinking of the lateral and the vertical axis. It highlights the need to
continuously re-examine ontological definitions when studying highly subjective
relational phenomena within contemporary organizational paradigms in which
authority and hierarchy keep evolving
Supporting young people to manage gender-related distress using third-wave cognitive behavioural theory, ideas and practice
Get PDFThe Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) supports gender diverse young people, and their families but currently does not provide weekly psychological therapy as part of its core work. In addition, local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), may feel deskilled in providing support for this population. We, a group of three Clinical Psychologists, aim to share some common themes and observations gained from our work in GIDS. We talk about how existing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) models can be relevant and helpful for the challenges facing gender diverse young people, without pathologising, or aiming to change a young person’s gender identity. An illustrative case study is presented, based on an amalgamation of young people we have worked with highlighting how third-wave cognitive behavioural theory, ideas and practice can be used to support young people to manage gender-related distress. Further reflections on the broader socio-political context, and implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed
Where are we now? Reflections on infant observation then and now
No full textThis overview starts in the 1960s and extends to 2022. It addresses debates about the technique of the observer and the conduct of seminars and describes the many changes in practice over that period. It summarises some of the important discoveries which drew on infant observation as well as clinical experience: Bick’s ‘second skin’, Maiello’s ‘sound object’, Meltzer’s ‘aesthetic conflict’, and numerous investigations of infants with particular vulnerabilities, including Piontelli’s twin studies and more recent observations of infants in a variety of particular life circumstances such as those born via surrogacy or living in foster care. The impressive extensions of the observational method beyond infancy and the use of observation as a clinical intervention are discussed. Finally, the adaptations of the method necessitated by the global pandemic are explored, with an emphasis on the changed role of the mother in distant observation. A clinical example using many different forms of distant contact to support a highly vulnerable mother/ infant couple is presented as an encouragement to engage with new ways of working