The psychic significance of the figure of the grandmother in psychodynamic psychotherapy has received scant attention. This paper develops the concept of the "grandmaternal transference" in parent-infant psychotherapy and explores its identification, its possible functions and its therapeutic significance. The grandmaternal transference has…

Family language policy (FLP), like language policies in general, includes aspects of practice, management and ideology. But FLP is often affected by and affects emotional issues and psychological dimensions that are seldom acknowledged as central in the analysis of such policies. Relying on a psychoanalytic theoretical framework, this article…

Problems with intimacy and interpersonal issues are exhibited across most psychiatric disorders. However, most of the targets in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are primarily intrapersonal in nature, with few directly involved in interpersonal functioning and effective intimacy. Functional Analytic Psychotherapy (FAP) provides a behavioral basis for…

School personnel and parents refer youth for psychoeducational evaluations for various reasons. At times, the data do not indicate difficulties that necessitate any level of special education services. That should not mean that the school psychologist's work is complete. Given that evaluation data can indicate a wide variety of issues, including…

This paper discusses a recent translational success in combining behavioral psychotherapy with a novel medication, d-cycloserine (DCS), to augment cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders. The literature on behavioral theory of exposure-based therapies is provided, followed by a discussion of the role of DCS in enhancing extinction…

This paper charts the journey made towards verbal communication with Mackenzie, a boy who was three years old at the start of treatment and diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder. In this paper, I bring together diverse areas of research and demonstrate how they inform my clinical practice. Together, these ideas created a multimodal and…

From a systems perspective, the role of the art therapist as social activist at a time of deep and crucial change for our clients, mental health systems, our country, and the world is discussed. Despite the fact that art therapists, through our artists' identities, are natural agents of change, our education and strivings for professional…

This article reflects on the conceptualization and treatment strategies associated with a systems perspective of the somatic couple. It is suggested that resistance to change, nurturance of the somatic patient by his or her partner, and rigid role taking serve to promote relationship stability and individual pseudopower at the cost of patient…

This paper argues that siblinghood has had an important place in child psychotherapy thinking for many decades. Both psychoanalytic observation of young children and clinical experience have contributed to this. It discusses some reasons for the renewed interest in siblings in the wider psychoanalytic field and emphasises the existential threat to…

Psychoanalysis and child psychotherapy have traditionally sought to describe their relationship to science in a variety of ways. As a consequence, different strands of the research programme are underpinned by divergent methodological and epistemic assumptions. The perceived incommensurability of these positions sometimes hinders the development…

The combined tools of psycholinguistics and systems analysis have produced advances in motivational profiling resulting in numerous applications to behavioral engineering. Knowing the way people frame their motive offers leverage in causing behavior change ranging from persuasive marketing campaigns, forensic profiling, individual psychotherapy,…

This paper suggests that some neuroscience concepts particularly concerned with brain pathways in trauma and fear, as well as the neurobiology of emotion, provide an additional vertex to the psychoanalytic understanding of patients' material. The role of the body has been neglected in psychoanalytic thought and formulations in favour of purely…