Pseudomentalization as a Challenge for Therapists of Group Psychotherapy With Drug Addicted Patients

One of the main challenges in group therapy with drug-addicted patients is collective pseudomentalization, i.e., a group discourse consisting of words and clichés that are decoupled from any inner emotional life and are poorly related to external reality. In this study, we aimed to explore the phenomenology of pseudomentalization and how it was addressed by the therapist in an outpatient group for drug-addicted patients. The group was composed of seven members, and the transcripts of eight audio-recorded sessions (one per month) were rated and studied. The interventions of the therapist were measured with the mentalization-based group therapy (MBT-G) adherence and quality scale by independent raters. Two sessions, one with the highest and one with the lowest adherence, were selected, and the clinical sequences of pseudomentalization were analyzed in a comparative way. The findings revealed that pseudomentalization does occur as a collective phenomenon, akin to “basic assumptions” of Wilfred Bion, which we reconceptualized in this study. Any pseudomentalization seemed to be reinforced by the therapist when she was presenting frequent and long interventions, when abstaining from the management of group boundaries, when providing questions focused more on content than on the mental states of the group members, and when not focusing on emotions. However, the ultimate source of collective pseudomentalization seemed to be the fear of the group members of being overwhelmed by painful emotions, mental confusion, and a loss of identity. The findings also indicated that the principles of MBT-G may be a good antidote to pseudomentalization.

Einstein en de kunst van... Managen zonder macht: Zeven alternatieven

Einstein Voor de auteurs staat Albert Einstein voor: nieuwsgierig, consistent, integer, gewetensvol, aandachtig en altijd persoonlijk. De onderzoeker, die vooral denkt in hypotheses, die hij aandachtig toetst door het stellen van vragen. Vragen en doorvragen, niet ophouden nieuwsgierig te zijn: een belangrijk kenmerk voor leiders en managers, die beogen verbetering te brengen in vaak complexe situaties. ... en de kunst van het zeilen In 2005 verscheen Einstein en de kunst van het zeilen, een zoektocht naar de nieuwe rol van de leidinggevende. Een lees- en werkboek over leiderschap en management, dat uitnodigt mee te zoeken naar de nieuwe rol van de leider. Het verzoek van veel gebruikers om ‘meer’, krijgt gehoor in de reeks Einstein en de kunst van.... Boeken met dezelfde ambitie, die de structuur, het karakter en de speelsheid van het basisboek naadloos volgen. Managen zonder macht De boodschap van dit boek is niet dat managen met macht (control of many by a few) per definitie overal en altijd fout zou zijn. Managen zonder macht (the capacity to produce change) blijkt echter een serieuze optie, die de moeite waard is om te onderzoeken. In die zin is dit boek een (onder)zoektocht, die de auteurs graag samen met hun lezers willen aangaan. Dit boek biedt een aantal theoretische kaders uit de Transactionele Analyse (Eric Berne), Group Relations Theory (Wilfred Bion) en de Systeem- en Communicatietheorie (Paul Watzlawick). Het is echter vooral een handreiking bij de zoektocht naar en de worsteling met de rol van leidinggevende in een snel veranderende omgeving.

Vicissitudes of Death Anxiety During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The author, an experienced psycho-oncologist, offers clinical insights that consider the importance of death anxiety in psychodynamic psychotherapy treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic. He reviews the contributions of Ernst Becker, Wilfred Bion and Sheldon Solomon, and formulates ideas of his own based on decades of experience treating patients with cancer. This short essay focuses on how to help patients during the COVID-19 pandemic work through fear and uncertainty while developing adaptive skills.

From Bion to Delany

Literature furnishes a particular vertex to see reality through narrative fiction. In particular, science fiction literature, which creates a fantastic situation starting from realistic data (history, science, cultures), may be considered a kind of creative process. It uses heterogeneous things and “integrates” them into a homogeneous, new and comprehensible product. Science fiction writing allows the objects of the real to be reprocessed in terms which are thinkable at the current moment. Using the terminology established in psychoanalysis by Wilfred Bion this reprocessing work is a transformation. According to Bion we can hypothesise that the writer of the science fiction literary work serves as a “container” and the science fiction novel, considered a different way to represent reality and not just a simple editorial product, serves as a alpha-function to make concepts that were not previously thinkable or understandable. Between the 70s and the 80s the writer Samuel Delany theorized and put into practice the use of a literary model called “modular calculus”. This model allows the literary work of making something unthinkable into thinkable. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how modular calculus is a particular type of Bionian transformation, and how the science fiction novel can play the role of alpha-function, transforming unthinkable concepts into thinkable ones.