Editorial

IN THIS ISSUE …

Narcissism, with its distortions of self-esteem, continues to be a central problem in psychotherapeutic work. Jan Ole Røvik describes changes in the superiority/inferiority dimension within a selfpsychological framework, allowing dependence on the object and depressive affect.

A new therapeutic tool that assists the ‘digestion’ of emotional experience is presented by Phil Mollon. Consistent with psychoanalytic and neurological principles, Accelerated Information Processing (EMDR) helps to work through anxiety and trauma.

Cultural influences infiltrate the early transference and countertransference as shown by Antonio Suman and Antonino Brignone. Culturally preformed fantasies in the initial sessions, if uninterpreted, can block the development of the therapeutic relationship.

Francis Grier writes of therapy with three couples who shun sexual relations, showing how oedipal fixations, rigid defences and fear of change can conspire to prevent psychic development and marital satisfaction.

Changes have taken place in the psychoanalytic treatment of homosexual patients. Anne Zachary summarizes the history of our views of homosexuality, and David Jones explores the therapist's strong affective countertransference responses within the context of bisexuality and homosexual object choice.

Literature offers up fascinating examples of personality types. Bernardine Bishop studies Shakespeare's characters, Lear and Prospero, comparing the projecting personality of Lear - blaming, raging - with Prospero's introjecting mode - forgiveness, acceptance and the capacity to love.

John Wright, winner of the Student Essay Prize, writes of the vicissitudes of relating and dissociating as found in work with a young bulimic woman.

Dynamic psychotherapy as taught to junior doctors training in psychiatry, with all the inherent difficulties, is reported by Christina Blackwell and Esti Rimmer-Yehudai who are clinical psychologists in the NHS.

Martin Stanton responds to Jackie Gerrard's cr