Walter Logeman: Journal
Listened to an interesting podcast from Future Primitive featuring Max Adashu who is writing volumes on Witches – Suppressed History
I like her politics and her sane approach to the supression of the feminine, which includes the suppression of the psych, and all things psychological (in the true soul anima sense of the word.) I liked the phrase that in culture male is default.
Art on her site here http://www.maxdashu.net/
Try using psychodynamic psychotherapy for panic disorder — HealthandAge:
Psychotherapy is an effective treatment for panic disorder, according to a new study comparing it with relaxation therapy. Panic disorder is a common and debilitating condition characterized by bouts of extreme anxiety, dizziness, palpitations and chest pain. It accounts for as many as 20 per cent of US emergency room visits. Antidepressant therapies can be used to treat it, as can cognitive behavioral therapy. In a new study, researchers at New York -Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center reveal that psychodynamic psychotherapy is also a useful approach. A group of 49 patients was assigned to either 12 weeks of twice weekly psychodynamic therapy or to applied relaxation training. The psychoanalysis was twice as effective as the relaxation. In the study, 73 per cent of those on psychotherapy reported improvement, compared to only 39 per cent in the relaxation group. Psychodynamic psychotherapy allows helps patients confront the root causes of the fear that drives their panic disorder. This was only a small study but the results are promising enough to justify its extension to larger groups of patients.
Source American Journal of Psychiatry March 2007
I suppose it is good to see this sort of report. However it is all nonsense. They muddle up the distinction between psychoanalysis & psychodynamic psychotherapy, and worse it the idea that psychodynamic psychotherapy is focused on a particular symptom with a particular outcome. It may be that there is deep trauma under the panic and even 24 sessions is rushing it. Worse still is that the clients will have had to consent to a battery of tests.
Psychotherapy is like some particles in physics – it changes if you observe it from the outside.
Nice to see a test that says psychotherapy os ok, but still silly
Scoop: Get It Straight: Repeal Section 59 And Cut Crime:
Anne Else’s Letter gets it right.
In the last post I wrote about my Thousand Sketches project – and how it has its roots in many things I have done. One of those projects was “Psybernet” it predates my involvement with the Internet – it began on Fidonet. That project hit me with a bang just like the Thousand Sketches just has. It was the realisation that the online communication I was involved in (in CompuServe at that time) was intrinsically psychological. I was familiar with Psychodrama and knew – from experience – how groups could be an incubator for psychological transformation.
Cyberspace was full of groups! I wanted a group that was consciously exploring this online space in a psychological way and Psybernet was it. That original group began on the Psybernet BBS, then moved to L-soft mailing list, and then to eGroups which were bought out by Yahoo groups.
While my focus has been on the dramas that unfold in groups – I also found out a lot about the infrastructure of online groups. Some software was better than others, and there are many more mature forms now. Caucus is a web forum that is the best I have experienced for conversation online. There are plenty of good email lists, but some do not handle files or the web all that well. For the best of all worlds for online groups using the Web & email is OnlineGroups.Net. It is very good as a web based forum and excellent for email, groups can all be accessed either way, and they can cohere on a site to form a community.
All this is on my mind as I am thinking about Thousand Sketches because the first person I shared my Psybernet ideas with as they emerged in the early 1990s was Dan Randow the main developer of OnlineGroups.Net. He was in both IT and Psychodrama and he immediately saw the online group potential for very productive work. Dan went on to develop a career facilitating groups online for organisations, for a while I worked in the company he established, GroupSense.
The initial philosophy was to use available technology. eGroups were a mainstay for GroupSense, but that went sour when Yahoo! pruchased them. It became much harder to integrate the tech into a group’s life. People needed a Yahoo ID and the messages carried ads. Something new was needed.
That led to GroupServer an open source project which has well a developed implementation at OnlineGroups.Net
I have been using the sevice for may years and have felt at home there for professional & personal groups.
OnlineGroups.Net is now offering sites with groups to the public, this is a new development and I find it fascinating how those discussions over the years with Dan about creating forms to enhance group life has led to us making public our endeavours, though different, at the same time! In the case of Dan, excellent software for groups, and for me Thousand Sketches.
Of course I have an Announcement Group for Thousand Sketches at OnlineGroups.Net.
The main ways I have explored anything in my life is by doing it. Climbing mountains – living & breathing philosophy in my early20s, relationships, counterculture & politics, psychotherapy, Psychodrama and cyberspace!
This blog, since its to its origins in “Links Pages” is one of the vessels for my experiential learning, a fairy mild one. Psyber-L was another – a really intense mailing list, that for a while was public, until closed at the wishes of its members. The two DreamEvents were powerful spaces to learn in. Doing psychotherapy online professionally is another experience that has given me an understanding of the net.
All of these things I do, with an eye to meaning, purpose and their depth, I can’t help it. If there is a way to go deeper – I sink in! They are vessels for my psyche when it needs to rumble & explode.
My current experiential vessel Thousand Sketches began naively, but I have realised that is a zone for me just like a psychotherapy relationship, a Psychodrama group, or a love relationship. I have not understood till now that the power of the psyche is enabled in our creativity area. The project is the psyche wanting something with me. It sounds a bit grand – but it is probably a simple & every day thing, just that right now it is very alive for me & I need to make sense of it all. Occasionally I am afraid it will drive me nuts.
I am writing this as I am planning an “launch” in Christchurch on 3 November. That is part of this project, it is public. Being messed around by my psyche in public! Public in Christchurch, and in New Zealand as I take this to Trade Me
It feels “Trade Me” is very literally true. It seems very congruent that the project has an auction gallery. I have written here – and extensively about Hermes being the archetype of the Internet. He is also the God of trade. It all fits – he has got me!
CG Jung Page – The Ghost at the Back Door
Dolores Brien reviews Sophia Heller’s new work The Absence of Myth. Good review and in its own right a useful discussion about what myth is useful for & what is miss-use. Dolores perspective is the one I am close to
The individual too has the same need. The telling of one’s story is the desire to “place ourselves within a larger story,” not for grandiose reasons, nor even to find Meaning in doing that, but rather, to understand just what was and is going on in this life I am living at this particular moment in history. Despite the radical disruption of postmodernism, there remains, and I venture to guess will always remain, a desire for continuity. To be in touch with one’s past is to be in touch with the fullness of one’s humanity.
However there is some coming together with her antagonist, Heller, as she knocks some miss-use of myth to inflate ego.
Heller’s project paradoxically references ghosts coming in the back door. She is already mythic, or was that introduced by Dolores? Either way myth presents itself, unbidden. I have not read the book, but I can hear the music of that old movie “Ghostbusters”! We live in myths, language is based on it. Far from leading to a lack of consciousness about the here & now, a particular use of myth raises consciousness.
Experience can’t be deconstructed, it is understood in living through it.
~
The whole review is here in case it goes dead:
Continue reading “Myth myth?”
BBC – Radio 4 In Our Time – Philosophy Archive
This is a treasure page. I have to be in the mood for this rather heavy stuff, but they are worth the effort. I have subbed to them and have a back log on my player. Unfortunately they are only streaming them there at the moment – Total Recorder would get them though. I particularly enjoyed the history of friendhip one today.
It seems that with Imago we have a philosophy and a practice of love, built on all the traditions before it, and still those old traditions, even on friendhip, can amplify our notions of love.
Assertive Outreach: A Strengths Approach to Policy and Practice by Peter Ryan and Steve Morgan
This book gives a comprehensive, evidence-based account of assertive outreach from a strengths perspective. It emphasizes developing a collaborative approach to working with the service user, which stresses the achievement of the service users own aspirations, and building upon the service users own strengths and resources. The book provides a comprehensive, authoritative approach to the subject, that combines an overview of the policy and practice issues. It makes use of extensive case study material to illustrate individual and team circumstances.
My last post pointed to the Author, Steve Morgan’s website. The blurb above sounds excellent, and it seems there is a strong focus on practice-based evidence and I am now more curious about the “strenghts” approach which I have seen introduced top down with not much success.
Practice Based Evidence – Welcome:
Contemporary mental health services are challenged to address ‘evidence based practice’, but is this at the expense of ‘practice based evidence’?
At first glance there is a very welcome movement here for an approach that can avoid scientism in psychotherapy. I am enthusiastic that this will blend well with the sort of sociometric exploration that Moreno developed. Using the words practice-based evidence there is a swag of good stuff that comes up in Google.
Category:Psychotherapy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a different page than the one that appears under Psychotherapy, which is also useful. This is a Wikipedia “Category” and it shows well how Psychotherapy is just that. Psychotherapy is a category like “tree” then there are many species some very different from others. In New Zealand we have one organization that covers all the various modalities, this is rather unusual in the world, even though there is also a World Council for Psychotherapy WCP (A trip to Beijing in 2008 could be a good thing to do!).
While there are irreconcilable world views behind some of the modalities, they reflect the complexity of the mind & soul. No one modality can really capture it all. My own training was in Psychodrama – which has its strengths but is essentially a group method. My one-to-one work is informed also by my training as a Social Worker and through my experience of personal Jungian Analysis.