Psychotherapy and Politics International (E-Journal)
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Creating a groundswell for change: Integrating religion, spirituality and Indigenous responses in psychotherapy
Get PDFSince the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, declared religion to be an illusion, deciding what belongs, and therefore what does not belong, in psychotherapy is highly determined by the dominant school of thought in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and the training institutions. These foundations pose a barrier in the therapeutic encounter when considering the importance of religion and spirituality in the lives of people and the development of pathways to healing for Indigenous Māori. There has been no enquiry into how psychotherapists are working with religion and/or spirituality (RS) within psychotherapy in the bicultural context of Aotearoa New Zealand, which presents as both a knowledge gap and the rationale for further exploration. The relationship between religion, spirituality, psychotherapy and biculturalism has been an uneasy one. This article, from grounded theory research conducted by the first author in Aotearoa New Zealand, delineates the process that psychotherapists engage in when they encounter a therapeutic challenge relating to RS considered beyond the scope of practice. It also discusses indigenous Māori spiritual perspectives and professional responsibilities
Eugenics and its evolution in the history of western psychology: A critical archival review
Get PDFSince its inception Western academic psychology has been influenced by and closely affiliated with eugenics, defined by its originators as the “science of racial betterment.” The role of eugenics has been minimally acknowledged in historical accounts of Western psychology, although it was fundamental to the establishment of empirical psychology methods as well as its applied theories, specifically behaviorism. The continued influence of eugenics in Western psychology, noted in this article, is traced to biologizing human differences while minimizing the role of social context as well as to dividing individuals into groups according to their supposedly innate fitness levels (such as intelligence and optimism). The impact of eugenics on the practice of psychotherapy is highlighted
Notes on the Open Letter on Jung and “Africans”, published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy in November 2018
Get PDFNotes on the Open Letter on Jung and “Africans”, published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy in November 201
The black flame: Traumatic amplification and the nonrecognition of sexual abuse
Get PDFThe traumatic impact of sexual abuse by a psychotherapist is exacerbated by subsequent invalidating care while an inpatient in a psychodynamically oriented psychiatric hospital. I designate the nonrecognition and mislabelling the reality of the original abuse “traumatic amplification.” This narrative of my personal history is presented as a professional memoir. In my instance, a long-term open psychiatric hospital systematically misunderstood, misdiagnosed, and clinically mismanaged my care and further consolidated the soul-murdering impact of my original therapeutic abuse. Central to my treatment was the active and collusive denial of my having been raped by a therapist. This space of denial was facilitated by systemic slippage of meaning as an assault against truth. “Abuse” was renamed an “affair” with its accusatory and persecutory implications that culminated in my being misdiagnosed as “psychotic,” a diagnosis that displaced the foreclosure of truth on the part of the hospital onto me. Central to healing the damage cumulative sexual trauma inflicts is validation by a symbolic authority to authenticate experience. The open psychiatric experience systemically failed in its provision of care and delegitimised my reality. Validation and, with it, a beginning integration of self, arrived years later in psychotherapy where non-defensive acknowledgement, attunement and mutual commitment were able to be held
Eros and Civilisation: A Philosophical Enquiry into Freud. Edited by H. Marcuse New York, NY: Beacon Press, 1955. 277 pp. ISBN-10: 9780807015551, ISBN-13: 978-0807015551 Psychoanalysis and civilisation
Get PDFEros and Civilisation: A Philosophical Enquiry into Freud. Edited by H. Marcuse New York, NY: Beacon Press, 1955. 277 pp. ISBN-10: 9780807015551, ISBN-13: 978-0807015551 Psychoanalysis and civilisatio
The “empty womb” in the therapy room? The taboo and potency of the other than mother/childfree body
Get PDFChoosing not to have children remains a quietly controversial decision. Curious about the increasing phenomenon of childlessness coinciding with a recognition of her internalised pronatal conditioning and her gradual realisation that she would not be a mother, the author started researching the parenthood decision in the late 1990s. Through autoethnography this paper explores pronatalism and prejudice towards those without child, particularly those who are voluntarily childless—now commonly known beyond academic circles as being “childfree” or “childfree by choice.” This exploration includes the lack of attention given to childfreedom in counselling and psychotherapy discourses beyond the therapy room, for example, in workshops, talks, books and papers. It recognises how therapists might offer spaces for creative dialogue about child-bearing—or not—as well as challenging implicit and explicit pronatalism in this intimate area of life. The chapter ends celebrating the “empty womb in the room,” reclaiming the potency of the childfree, other than mother body, and the importance of women without children reclaiming the sovereignty of their bodies. The author underlines the importance of creativity as well as procreativity in the anthropocene, as we face interrelated crises, for example the sixth extinction crisis and the climate emergency, and refers to the response of the budding field of ecopsychology
Too hot to handle? Working with erotic charge
Get PDFWhat would it bring to practice and theory to reconceptualize psychotherapy as an erotic relationship, where eros is at the core of what we do? How can our work as psychotherapists be best supported in an erotically denying culture and in an ambivalently erotic profession? This paper looks briefly at the history of psychotherapy around this issue, and argues that relational body psychotherapy has specific strengths for working with the erotic. Body psychotherapy has long championed the centrality of sexuality in our lives and in the therapy room