exisdential

An excerpt below from the brilliant ‘Personality Syndromes’ paper by @JonathanShedler (reference jonathanshedler.com/wp-conte… ) I think about this often, and it really gets to the heart of what it’s all about. I’m in the infancy of my career in this field,but this is central 4me.

#London #thames #sunrise

Probably the most important thing to understand about people with psychotic illnesses or psychotic-level psychologies is that they are terrified……..the person with a vulnerability to psychotic disorganization lacks a basic sense of security in the world and is ready to believe that annihilation is imminent. Adopting any approach that permits a lot of ambiguity, as does traditional analytic therapy with neurotics, is like throwing gasoline into the flame of psychotic-level terror. Consequently, the treatment of choice with psychotic-level patients has generally been framed as "supportive therapy," an approach that emphasizes active support of the patient's dignity, self-esteem, ego strength, and need for information and guidance. Dr Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Diagnosis Second Edition On a purely personal level, when encountering people in the psychotic range, I have felt sincerity, honesty, and being someone who can be quite forthright, and structured at times helps.

Just as a physician expects a healthy person to recover faster and more completely from an illness than a sickly one, or as a teacher assumes that an intelligent student will master more material than a slow one, a therapist should have different expectations for people with different levels of character development. Realistic goals protect patients from demoralization and therapists from burnout. Dr Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Diagnosis Second Edition

Beyond conveying certain basic therapeutic attitudes, including curiosity, respect, compassion, devotion, integrity, and the willingness to admit mistakes and limitations. I do not believe in teaching a particular “technique" in the absence of trying to understand the psychology of the person to whom one is applying the technique. Dr Nancy McWilliams Psychoanalytic Diagnosis Second Edition

On the other hand, I also have seen that individuals with childhood trauma are more likely to misperceive themselves as having neurodiversity because of social deficits, sense of otherness, and repetitive and dissociative coping strategies. Lack of appropriate parental modelling, shame, anxiety and generalised mistrust can hold individuals back from engaging and acquiring developmentally appropriate social skills. Reference: cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Hi all, looking for psychotherapy outcomes research papers? In process of reading one but anything related to this would love to read!

Time and time again I always see the best in humans when they do something which transcends the self and serves a cause bigger than themselves. Self transcendence is like a naturally induced flow state, no one can tell you what cause you need to serve, you just know, but just anecdotally I find people seem more energised despite struggling with rumination, mood fluctuations, anhedonia etc. Diagnosis, formulation, identifying, and treatment of classic manifestations of depression for example is definitely helpful! However the individual is still faced with the existential queston of ‘ok what now?’. Existential distress is certainly not a new phenomenon, but not really explored in conventional mental health discourse, this is why i repeatedly encourage others to explore art, film (world cinema), literature poetry, artisans etc. They speak to people in an accessible yet deeply moving manner, and enable people to discover their own true essence!