The role of empathy in psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A historical exploration

Empathy is one of the most consistent outcome predictors in contemporary psychotherapy research. The function of empathy is particularly important for the development of a positive therapeutic relationship: patients report positive therapeutic experiences when they feel understood, safe, and able to disclose personal information to their therapists. Despite its clear significance in the consulting room and psychotherapy research, there is no single, consensual definition of empathy. This can be accounted by the complex and multi-faceted nature of empathy, as well as the ambiguous and conflicting literature surrounding it. This paper provides a historical exploration of empathy and its impact on the therapeutic relationship across the most influential psychoanalytic psychotherapies: classic psychoanalysis, person-centered therapy and self-psychology. By comparing the three clinical schools of thought, the paper identifies significant differences in the function of transference and therapist’s role. Then, drawing on the different clinical uses of empathy, the paper argues that the earlier uses of empathy (most notably through Jaspers’ and Freud’s writings) are limited to its epistemological (intellectual or cognitive) features, whilst person-centered and self-psychology therapies capitalise on its affective qualities. Finally, the paper provides a rationale for further study of the overarching features of empathy in contemporary psychotherapy research

Anti-Nirvana: crime, culture and instrumentalism in the age of insecurity

‘Anti-Nirvana’ explores the relationship between consumer culture, media and criminal motivations. It has appeared consistently on the list of the top-ten most-read articles in this award-winning international journal, and it mounts a serious neo-Freudian challenge to the predominant naturalistic notion of ‘resistance’ at the heart of liberal criminology and media studies. It is also cited in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology and other criminology texts as a persuasive argument in support of the theory that criminality amongst young people is strongly linked to the acquisitive values of consumerism and the images of possessive individualism that dominate mass media

Feeling our way: academia, emotions and a politics of care

This paper aims to better understand the role of emotions in academia, and their part in producing, and challenging, an increasingly normalized neoliberal academy. It unfolds from two narratives that foreground emotions in and across academic spaces and practices, to critically explore how knowledges and positions are constructed and circulated. It then moves to consider these issues through the lens of care as a political stance towards being and becoming academics in neoliberal times. Our aim is to contribute to the burgeoning literature on emotional geographies, explicitly bringing this work into conversation with resurgent debates surrounding an ethic of care, as part of a politic of critiquing individualism and managerialism in (and beyond) the academy. We consider the ways in which neoliberal university structures circulate particular affects, prompting emotions such as desire and anxiety, and the internalisation of competition and audit as embodied scholars. Our narratives exemplify how attendant emotions and affect can reverberate and be further reproduced through university cultures, and diffuse across personal and professional lives. We argue that emotions in academia matter, mutually co-producing everyday social relations and practices at and across all levels. We are interested in their political implications, and how neoliberal norms can be shifted through practices of caring-with

The management aspect of psychotherapy with aggressive children

Psychotherapy with an aggressive child may require the imposition of rather firm limitations over aspects of the patient's aggressive behavior. The nature of this management strategy is determined by the individual child's psychopathology. The management aspects of the psychotherapy with two aggressive boys are illustrated in detail. In one case, stringent limitations were imposed when it was discovered that the boy's behavior was regressive and represented an effort to sadistically control people in his environment. In the other case, the behavior was initially left almost unchallenged; this boy's aggressive and delinquent behavior reflected an effort to achieve a sense of order in an inconsistent external and potentially chaotic internal environment.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43969/1/10578_2005_Article_BF01463450.pd

'I-I' and 'I-me' : Transposing Buber's interpersonal attitudes to the intrapersonal plane

Hermans' polyphonic model of the self proposes that dialogical relationships can be established between multiple I-positions1 (e.g., Hermans, 2001a). There have been few attempts, however, to explicitly characterize the forms that these intrapersonal relationships may take. Drawing on Buber's (1958) distinction between the 'I-Thou' and 'I-It' attitude, it is proposed that intrapersonal relationships can take one of two forms: an 'I-I' form, in which one I-position encounters and confirms another I-position in its uniqueness and wholeness; and an 'I-Me' form, in which one I-position experiences another I-position in a detached and objectifying way. This article argues that this I-Me form of intrapersonal relating is associated with psychological distress, and that this is so for a number of reasons: Most notably, because an individual who objectifies and subjugates certain I-position cannot reconnect with more central I-positions when dominance reversal (Hermans, 2001a) takes place. On this basis, it is suggested that a key role of the therapeutic process is to help clients become more able to experience moments of I-I intrapersonal encounter, and it is argued that this requires the therapist to confirm the client both as a whole and in terms of each of his or her different voices

Currents and Superpotentials in classical gauge invariant theories I. Local results with applications to Perfect Fluids and General Relativity

E. Noether's general analysis of conservation laws has to be completed in a Lagrangian theory with local gauge invariance. Bulk charges are replaced by fluxes of superpotentials. Gauge invariant bulk charges may subsist when distinguished one-dimensional subgroups are present. As a first illustration we propose a new {\it Affine action} that reduces to General Relativity upon gauge fixing the dilatation (Weyl 1918 like) part of the connection and elimination of auxiliary fields. It allows a comparison of most gravity superpotentials and we discuss their selection by the choice of boundary conditions. A second and independent application is a geometrical reinterpretation of the convection of vorticity in barotropic nonviscous fluids. We identify the one-dimensional subgroups responsible for the bulk charges and thus propose an impulsive forcing for creating or destroying selectively helicity. This is an example of a new and general Forcing Rule.Comment: 64 pages, LaTeX. Version 2 has two more references and one misprint corrected. Accepted in Classical and Quantum Gravit