Editorial

IN THIS ISSUE …

Winnicott placed a high value on the life-affirming and expressive qualities of the human imagination. Richard Frankel writes of how Winnicott viewed the relationship between fantasy, reality and the transitional shared third space, illustrated by his case study, The Piggle.

When does a pathological culture give rise to new forms of madness? The manic lifestyles of youth and their influence on the unconscious psychic life of the individual are the subject of Giovanni Starace's article.

Research into how psychotherapy works and whether it is effective is demanded by today's culture, but can it be undertaken in a clinical setting without interfering with and upsetting the therapeutic relationship? A group at the TMSI, Christopher Clulow, Avi Shmueli, Christopher Vincent and Christopher Evans, introduced a research protocol into the procedures of couple therapy that became acceptable to clinicians, yielding better understanding of links between attachment patterns of couples and their conflict management tactics.

Engaging people from ethnic minorities in psychotherapy currently preoccupies many service providers and brings up questions of cultural matching. Jaya Gowrisunkur, Erica Burman and Kanta Walker report on a brief dynamic therapy with a Pakistani Muslim man conducted by a non-Muslim Asian woman, working in the patient's native language.

Men who have been sexually abused in childhood can be significantly helped by psychodynamic group therapy as reported by Audrey Morrison and Linda Treliving. The men, all with severe symptoms and personality problems, improved in terms of emotional distress, interpersonal sensitivity, depression and psychoticism as measured by the SCL 90.

Mothers and babies have been treated together in both group and individual therapy with good results. Two contributions in this issue feature mother and baby therapy: Jessica James writes of a group which evolved into a safe, reliable ‘group-mother’ through cycles of collapse and reco