{"title":"Psychodynamic Functions of Digital Media within Our Child/Adolescent Sessions – From Interference to Enhancement – A Benevolent Viewpoint","authors":"R. Holloway","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859281","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT To provide a structure for our thinking about the impact of digital media on our therapeutic work, I have outlined a way of organizing such thinking. I utilize the idea of the “psychodynamic functions” digital media perform within the context of our therapeutic work. Based mainly on my own experiences as a therapist, I outline 16 “psychodynamic functions,” which are the most frequent and salient ones. I provide additional structure by organizing these “psychodynamic functions” into three categories. The three categories are the “enhancing functions” that are likely to contribute to the richness of our psychoanalytic work, the “straddling functions” which are likely to have both enriching, enhancing aspects at times, along with defensive or impeding aspects at other times, and finally, the “defensive functions” which seem always to have defensive purposes. Equipped with these conceptualizations of psychodynamic functions, I consider seven detailed clinical examples of children and adolescents who have used digital media in their sessions. These examples include one patient suffering from trauma, one at a neurotic level of functioning, and five who were on the autism spectrum (either Asperger’s or high-functioning autism). I conclude with integrated reflections on the case illustrations, including discussion of how formulating the psychodynamic functions illuminates the types of in-session interventions to consider.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859281","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42081631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Impact of Internet Pornography on Male Adolescent Mental Organization","authors":"A. Sugarman","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859299","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Internet pornography should not be automatically considered deleterious to adolescent development just as no one environmental factor is ever pathogenic. Nonetheless, it should not be considered as harmless as Playboy was to the Boomer generation during their adolescence. There are a variety of factors involved in its being available through the internet that can promote omnipotence, undermine the capacity for symbolization, and lead some adolescents to relate to others only as part objects. These possibilities become more likely when the family structure promotes grandiosity and is sexually overstimulating. In such instances, latency is disrupted so that the impending adolescent arrives at that developmental stage without the requisite capacities to successfully manage its challenges. Vignettes from a case of one such adolescent boy are offered to demonstrate how internet pornography left him unable to internalize the various regulatory functions required to transition to early adulthood.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859299","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41456666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Systemic Racism and Othering within Government Agencies: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Environmental Injustice in the Flint, Michigan Water Crisis","authors":"M. Rudden","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859292","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The severe water emergency in Flint, Michigan between 2014 and 2016 was inarguably caused by systemic organizational dysfunction. The Michigan Governor Snyders’ Flint Water Advisory Task Force, in their analysis of the severe water emergency in Flint, Michigan, emphasized the degree of systemic organizational dysfunction, providing evidence that the agencies involved demonstrated a disregard for the poor and black citizens of Flint and participated in environmental injustice. The author traces, through journalists’ reports, e-mails between and among officials, first-hand testimony and the timeline provided by the Task Force, that the performance of the involved agencies (the state Department of Environmental Quality and the Michigan Department of Health Services) was tainted by systemic racism, Othering and by the dehumanization of Flint citizens the majority of whom were African American, and poor. The scandal was finally made public when a pediatrician showed unequivocal data on the alarmingly high lead levels in children who ingested the water. An organizational analysis based on psychoanalytic principles (Freud, Bion, Hopper) further supplements her observations that systemic racism aided and abetted severe systemic dysfunction.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859292","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42777274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction - In-Session Use of Digital Material in Child Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy","authors":"A. Bram","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859276","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This section on digital media in child psychoanalysis and psychotherapy is intended to help fill in a gap in the psychoanalytic literature where much more has been written about the cultural and developmental impact of the digital revolution compared to conceptualization and intervention in clinical work with children and adolescents who wish to access digital media within sessions. In this introductory article, I provide a preview of the section’s articles by four experienced psychoanalytic child clinicians. Each author-clinician offers multiple case illustrations and commentaries on the formulations that undergird their inventions with child and adolescent patients who sought to bring digital devices and media directly into treatment sessions. The hope is that this section will inspire other child analysts and therapists to write about their experiences on treatment’s digital frontier and thus expand our literature on this topic that is of vital importance in contemporary practice.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859276","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47284299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Between Dependency and Addiction","authors":"José Alberto Zusman","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859304","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The present paper suggests the existence of two axes of human development: the axis of dependence, associated with human connectedness and the axis of addiction, associated with using inanimate objects to fulfill one’s needs. A crucial role of the analyst who treats people with addictions is to promote movement toward the axis of dependence. These ideas are illustrated in reports of psychoanalysis with two very disturbed patients.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859304","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41348971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Black Youth: Self-making, Creativity and the Assertion of Hybrid Black Identities","authors":"C. Adams","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859268","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Development during adolescence and early adulthood is profoundly exhilarating and transformative, especially given emerging physical, emotional and intellectually capabilities. Psychoanalytic theories of development assume culture as benign and as not being an impediment to good-enough development. This is not the case for Black youth development, especially for those of low income. Their age-appropriate joy of life and insouciance must be tempered by caution and vigilance given the racist and impoverished communities in which they live. Some are able, with adequate protection and nurturance from family and community, to sculpt a hybrid self that is savvy, resilient and creative around self-making. Such a supported and protected self is also impactful on the larger world. These states exist in tension with a self-regulatory capacity to avoid dangerous regressions in expressing the rage at their cultural oppressions or the temptations of mindless consumption in pursuit of pleasure. They draw on inter and intra-generational legacies that speak to managing and sometimes re-signifying trauma narratives as protective and inspirational. Such Black self-worth by youth fashions hybrid, caring and innovative selves.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859268","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47624214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction - Analytic Work in the Pandemic","authors":"Denia M. Barrett, Jill M. Miller","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859285","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859285","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT When the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic became apparent in March 2020, questions about the role teletherapy could play in mental health treatments and psychoanalysis of children and adolescents suddenly moved from the hypothetical – can it work? – to the essential – how will it work? The two papers in this section provide an early snapshot showing challenges and possibilities brought about by the necessity of moving to distance technologies to preserve and protect analytic work despite the global crisis.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859285","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45712493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Connecting with Children and Adolescents and Deepening Psychoanalytic Treatment: Creative Possibilities for In-Session Use of Digital Media and Devices","authors":"Roderick Hall","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859280","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Historically, child psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-oriented child therapists have used games, toys, and art materials creatively to engage their patients, facilitate connection, and deepen treatment. Over the past two decades, screens and digital devices have become increasingly pervasive in the play and lives of children and adolescents. Although there are some well-founded concerns about the potential negative effects of screens and digital devices on child development, I take the position that the child analyst’s attitude toward electronic devices needs to shift from whether to use them in treatment to how to use them. In this article, I offer a series of case examples showing how screens and digital devices can be used in-session in productive ways akin to how child analysts have always used their creativity to engage with their patients.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859280","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42751465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Useful Untruths: A Plea for the Necessity of Pluralism in Child Analysis","authors":"C. Lament","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859282","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859282","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The late nineteenth century philosopher Hans Vaihinger and the preeminent contemporary philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah contend that in order to see a more complete picture of the world, we need a plurality of pictures with which to view it, not just one. This truth comes with epistemological burdens and with the inconvenient fact that the human mind is unable to juggle more than one picture or theory simultaneously. Thus, psychoanalytic clinicians tend to select one theory as a guide when treating patients. In this paper, I will offer ways to think about this conundrum as it appears in the child psychoanalytic setting and whether it is possible to shift from one’s usual theoretical point of view to include alternate theoretical perspectives – and thus, to gain a more complete “truth”, as Vaihinger and Appiah suggest we should aspire to – as the clinical situation allows.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859282","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47571280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Rapid Adjustment to Tele-analysis and Therapy Due to COVID-19","authors":"D. Prezant","doi":"10.1080/00797308.2020.1859288","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859288","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a need to be physically distant from our patients while we were all experiencing a massive life-threatening change in our lives. Analysts and therapists had to stop seeing patients in-person. The overnight shift to teletreatment required many adjustments. This was particularly difficult for child analysis. Exploring these changes allows us to further our understanding of the differences between child and adult analysis as well as to better understand what analysis is.","PeriodicalId":45962,"journal":{"name":"Psychoanalytic Study of the Child","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/00797308.2020.1859288","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48464210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}