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On disappointment: promoting ordinary conversations in extraordinary times
No full textTo be disappointed is to be human, to be disappointing is also to be human. This article will invite reflection upon the under-theorised phenomenon of disappointment and its relationship to ‘failure’, to ‘hope’ and perhaps even ‘forgiveness’ (or the lack if it). The central premise is that to engage with ‘disappointment’ in our internal relatedness, and in our interpersonal and social relationships may enable us to re-connect with our own and others’ humanity ‐ and not to do so is to remain stuck, aggrieved, resentful and locked into cycles of reciprocal self- and other-destructive violence and recrimination. The article will seek to explore disappointment as a ‘disturbance of groupishness’ (Bion, 1961, emphasis added), ‘a location of disturbance’ (Foulkes, 1948/1983 emphasis added) and a way of structuring the traumatised organisation-in-the-mind (Armstrong, 2005; Scanlon, 2012). The article will conclude with an invitation for psycho-social practitioners to leave our psycho-social retreats (consulting rooms, libraries, classrooms and the like) and, once again, to engage more deliberatively with conversations in ‘public spheres’ (Habermas, 1968)
Adolescent states of mind recalled in Bion’s ‘The Long Weekend’
Get PDFThis research examines W. R. Bion’s autobiography ‘The Long Weekend: Part of a
Life (1897 - 1919)’ in which he tells the story of what happened to him during his
childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood including an account of those around
him and what was happening to them, especially in their relationships with him. A
very painful upbringing is portrayed; one that is full of emotional deprivations. The
nature of memory and the autobiographical method, including the text as a partial
and selective account of his schooldays, is considered and viewed as having the
potential to arrive at intimate truths given the condition of interior observation is met.
Psychoanalytic conceptualizations of the adolescent states of mind that Bion recalls
are made using a reverie-informed approach and drawing on contemporary
psychoanalytic writing to add a further perspective to the one he chose to provide.
What is presented is a personal reading of the pre/adolescent states of mind Bion
describes at his Hertfordshire boarding school. The social-contextual aspects of
Bion’s situation who was also a child of his time are also considered and viewed as
providing the clues to the emotional atmosphere he grew up in. The focus is on the
impact of this atmosphere on his interior states. A further argument is presented
that Bion’s descriptions of his pre/adolescent states of mind have unique value to
the understanding of wider experiences of adolescent development, both in his time
and as it is relevant to adolescent development today, especially in its more deprived
instances such as with child psychotherapists’ experiences. Research findings
reveal the ubiquitous nature of adolescent bullying, the importance for boys to have
access to helpful male figures to identify with, the dangers of socio-political censoring
of adolescent boys’ sexuality and the impact of anxiety and deprivation on their
capacities to relate. They also contribute to biographical understandings of the child Bion
Key concepts developed at the Portman Clinic
No full textChild psychotherapists working at the Portman Clinic are in the privileged position of being highly valued by the adult psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, and presentations from members of the 'Child Team' at the Clinic's weekly discussion meetings have always been greatly appreciated. The Core Complex, Portman 'lore' and other thoughts on working with young people at the Portman Clinic are explained below. This way of thinking does not condone physical violence, of course, or lay blame on victims of abuse; it helps us to understand how violence becomes an integral part of a relationship which cannot exist without it. To avoid increasing the patient's anxieties and breaching their much-needed defences, we have to be extremely careful about what we say and especially how we say things, as the patient will so easily feel intruded upon, controlled, neglected, dismissed, humiliated and criticized. I'd been sharing a room with another child psychotherapist where there was such a toy cupboard, which I'd originally been very sniffy about, but it proved enormously helpful when I started seeing an 8-year-old boy whose mother worried about his aggressive outbursts at home and compulsive dressing-up in girls' clothes. As I tried to explore his discomfort with me, it emerged that he found all verbal communication difficult. This is in itself could often help professionals when we also offered psychoanalytic understanding in ordinary language about how the patient's offending behaviour was their attempted unconscious 'solution' to the terrors, anxieties and conflicts in their internal world
Involuntary dislocation: Home, trauma, resilience, and adversity-activated development
No full textRenos K. Papadopoulos clearly and sensitively explores the experiences of people who reluctantly abandon their homes, searching for safer lives elsewhere, and provides a detailed guide to the complex experiences of involuntary dislocation.
Involuntary Dislocation: Home, Trauma, Resilience, and Adversity-Activated Development identifies involuntary dislocation as a distinct phenomenon, challenging existing assumptions and established positions, and explores its linguistic, historical, and cultural contexts. Papadopoulos elaborates on key themes including home, identity, nostalgic disorientation, the victim, and trauma, providing an in-depth understanding of each contributing factor whilst emphasising the human experience throughout. The book concludes by articulating an approach to conceptualising and working with people who have experienced adversities engendered by involuntary dislocation, and with a reflection on the language of repair and renewal.
Involuntary Dislocation will be a compassionate and comprehensive guide for psychotherapists, clinical psychologists, counsellors, and other professionals working with people who have experienced displacement. It will also be important reading for anyone wishing to understand the psychosocial impact of extreme adversity
Identity as experienced and explored in therapy with adopted children: An IPA study
Get PDFThe aim of this study is to explore therapists’ experience and understanding of adopted children’s identity. Identity formation takes place overtime, all children go through the process. For adopted children, it is further complicated by the meaning of the past and their current sense of self and belonging. In this study, eight therapists in a Specialist CAMHS clinic were interviewed. Verbatim transcripts of the interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to examine how the therapists experienced and explored identity for adopted children. Three emergent themes were identified ‘The Evolving Sense of Self’, ‘There are many facets’ and ‘Creating a little platform’ with recurrent super-ordinate themes providing a rich description of the ther- apists lived experience. Key findings suggest that therapists were working with children who were still affected by trauma, many struggled to adjust to their adoptive families. The children had neg- ative views of the self, they felt persecuted by their history, both known and unknown. There was a sense of fragmentation and splitting. The therapists found adoptive families experienced social stigma and discrimination. The study found therapists wel- comed the space to think about the difficulties they encountered in therapy. The novel findings are discussed and informed by psychoanalytic theory highlighting the com- plexity of the adoption experience and the need for identity to be thought about in therapy, clinical supervision and at home through open communication
Laverne Antrobus on Steph's Packed Lunch. How parents can talk to children in the light of a sudden lockdown. 05 January 2021. Channel 4 [Starts at approximately 1:08:27]
No full textThe Therapist’s Voice: Discussion of “Expressivity and Transformation through Language in Work with Serious Disorder”
No full textDirector points out that language has been somewhat sidelined by the modern emphasis on the importance of procedural non-verbal encounters. She recounts some clearly life-saving words she uttered to a very despairing patient. The review cites several literary critics commenting on the arousing, even exciting, effect of the inner rhythms contained in great poetry: the reviewer suggests that a related effect on the therapist’s voice may have added power and much-needed strength to the words themselves in this clinical situation
Developing supra-vision using naturally occurring video material within supervision
No full textSupervision plays a vital role in the delivery of safe, effective, reflective clinical practice. Supervision of work with families is multi-layered and includes both detailed scrutiny of how family members communicate with each other as well as exploration of how therapists communicate with those in the family system. Retrospective supervision based on the clinicians’ memory and clinical notes is the most common type of supervision once a clinician is qualified. However, this supervisory form often lacks detail and depth when compared with review of what actually happened within a clinical session based on review of a recording. This chapter focusses on the benefits of using conversation analytic tools within supervision to explore and ultimately improve therapist-family communication. Following a review of literature and a detailed practice-example, I show the benefits of starting supervisory conversations with conversation-analytic examination of video-tape material. I show how words and embodied actions can tell different stories about the process of communication and so need to be considered together. Micro-practices of spoken and embodied communication are connected to issues of power and social diversity. Overall, I conclude that the costs of making and carefully examining recordings of clinical work within supervision are outweighed by the learning gained
Self-harm and the harm of others in adolescents
No full textMaintaining a simultaneous sense of oneself as a victim and perpetrator is not a straightforward task for the patient or for the professionals working with them. In this chapter, the author compares his work with an adolescent boy who repeatedly raped his sister and an adolescent girl who made a serious suicide attempt and who was seen as a vulnerable victim. In psychoanalytic terms, the word ‘perversion’ is used descriptively to refer to erotic activity that does not have as its aim genital sexuality. The author uses two clinical examples, Pietr and Zoe, as illustrations. Pietr’s psychotherapy was, in its early stages, characterized by material in which he was a victim of a situation in which he felt he had been misunderstood and unappreciated. Zoe’s suicide attempt, a major drug overdose, took place at the seaside town where her family owned a holiday home
Tavistock Centenary: the Tavistock Autism service over four decades
No full textAn event held in December 2020 explored the rich clinical work and innovative thinking around Autism Spectrum Condition at the Tavistock over the past four decades. Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists Sue Reid and Anne Alvarez describe their early groundbreaking work within the Tavistock Autism Team and Workshop. This work yielded the fascinating clinical observations that there were some children with the condition who made significant gains in therapy, leading to major developments in psychoanalytic techniques for this group. Since then, there has been a continuing influence of psychoanalytical, systemic perspectives on the Tavistock approach to Autism. It is an approach which at the same time is firmly rooted in the research around Autism’s neurodevelopmental basis. Nechama Polak, Clinical Psychologist, provides an account of how the current work of the team has increasingly focused on supporting young adults with the condition, and their parents, whilst Myooran Canagaratnam, Consultant Psychiatrist, describes the Tavistock approach to diagnostic assessment