Towards a better use of psychoanalytic concepts: a model illustrated using the concept of enactment

It is well known that there is a lack of consensus about how to decide between competing and sometimes mutually contradictory theories, and how to integrate divergent concepts and theories. In view of this situation the IPA Project Committee on Conceptual Integration developed a method that allows comparison between different versions of concepts, their underlying theories and basic assumptions. Only when placed in a frame of reference can similarities and differences be seen in a methodically comprehensible and reproducible way. We used "enactment" to study the problems of comparing concepts systematically. Almost all psychoanalytic schools have developed a conceptualization of it. We made a sort of provisional canon of relevant papers we have chosen from the different schools. The five steps of our method for analyzing the concept of enactment will be presented. The first step is the history of the concept; the second the phenomenology; the third a methodological analysis of the construction of the concept. In order to compare different conceptualizations we must know the main dimensions of the meaning space of the concept, this is the fourth step. Finally, in step five we discuss if and to what extent an integration of the different versions of enactment is possible

Nowhere Home: The Waiting of Vulnerable Child Refugees

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Looking for a good doctor : a cultural formulation of the treatment of a First Nations woman using western and First Nations method.

The following paper utilizes the DSM-IV suggested clinical and cultural formulation to present an example of how First Nations and western treatment methods can work together to treat a First Nation\u27s woman with a serious mental disorder. The formulation provides reflections on cultural elements in the diagnosis and what distinct and common elements are present in the First Nations and western explanatory models for etiology and treatment

Sleep studies in Serbian victims of torture: Analysis of traumatic dreams

One of prominent features related to the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is according to DSM-5 “recurrent distressing dreams in which the content and/or affect of the dream are related to the traumatic event(s)”. The phenomenology and the underlying dynamics of traumatic dreams are areas of study that still need to be understood. The study presented in this chapter is a qualitative study of traumatic dreams of torture survivors of the last Balkan wars. Aims of the study were to demonstrate two different methods of qualitative analysis of dreams which could be used for the investigation of latent structures of reported narratives of dreams, and to demonstrate how these structures are reflected in posttraumatic states, as changes in affect regulation, symbolization and attachment to others. An additional aim of the study was to help clinicians to better understand their traumatized patients’ dreaming by identifying mechanisms related to posttraumatic processes within the dream and thus give a better understanding on how the traumatized dreamers attempt of healing fail in recurrent nightmares