Artistic process, Culture, Freud, mental health, Poetry, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, talking treatment
Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips: Poetry as Therapy
Adam Phillips: “On the one hand, psychoanalysis is practical in the sense that there is an attempt to solve a problem, or to cure somebody, or at least to address their suffering. But the other thing that psychoanalysis does is that the project is to enable somebody to speak. It’s the attempt to create the conditions in which somebody can speak themselves as fully as possible.”
[Click here to read the whole article on The Economist site]
Culture, Freud, mental health, psychoanalysis, talking treatment
Interview with Psychoanalyst Eric Laurent
Click here to read the whole of the article on the Haaretz website.
Q: What actually gets lost when someone takes his symptoms to a cognitive psychologist?
Laurent: “I can tell you where I do not agree with my colleagues from the ethical viewpoint. I am opposed to the behavioral aspect that exists in the usual combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy. The patient is liable to find himself in a confrontation with a powerful authority who tries to impose a behavioral change with a ‘one size fits all’ approach. As though good behavior exists that can be standardized. That is not only harmful to the subject, it is genuinely dangerous to the ideals of freedom. In 1971, at the height of the behaviorist ‘craze,’ Skinner [B.F. Skinner, the father of behaviorism] told Time magazine that freedom is a luxury we can’t afford.
Courtil, Culture, mental health, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, talking treatment
‘Like An Open Sky’ – a documentary about the ‘Courtil’ treatment centre for children
It’s very good to hear that Mariana Otero’s acclaimed film about Le Courtil, the Lacanian-oriented treatment centre on the French-Belgium border for children, adolescents and adults with mental health problems, will be released with subtitles in the UK in October. We’ll try to see about getting a showing in Bristol somehow…
“Alysson considers her body with mistrust. Evanne spins and twists until he collapses. Amina can’t manage to make words come out of her mouth. At the border between France and Belgium there exists a special place which takes care of psychologically and socially challenged children. Day after day, the adults working there try to understand the enigma that each of these children represent and invent, case by case, without ever imposing anything, solutions that will help them live peaceful lives.”
Click the image below to watch the trailer for the film on YouTube: 
Culture, mental health, Open Dialogue, psychotherapy, talking treatment
The Open Dialogue Approach to Healing Psychosis
Click the image above to watch the full 74 minute documentary on the Open Dialogue Approach, an innovative treatment for psychosis which has been pioneered recently in Finland.
Culture, DSM, mental health, Open Dialogue, psychotherapy, talking treatment
Carina Håkansson – Healing Psychosis with the Open Dialogue Approach
Carina Hakansson speaks about the groundbreaking ‘Open Dialogue Approach’ to the in-patient treatment of psychosis in Sweden. [Click here to view the talk on YouTube]
Artistic process, Culture, mental health, psychotherapy
The play that wants to change the way we treat mental illness
Can theatre offer a cure for psychosis? It’s unlikely – and it would be unwise for any theatre-maker even to try. What theatre can do, though, is convey the experience of psychosis: the hallucinations and delusions – often terrifying, sometimes comical – that define reality for those with schizophrenia and related conditions. [Click here to read the rest of the article on the Guardian site.]
Artistic process, Culture, mental health, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy
Making Space – Psychoanalysis and Artistic Process – videos from 2012 UCL conference
Videos from ‘Psychoanalysis and Artistic Process – a day of dialogues between artists and psychoanalysts’ which took place on 25th February 2012 at University College London. Discussion between artists and psychoanalysts including Kenneth Wright, Sharon Kivland, Grayson Perry, Valerie Sinason, Martin Creed and Lesley Caldwell.
[To view these videos on Vimeo, please click here (page 1) and here (page2)]
Culture, Poetry, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy
On Poetry and psychoanalysis – Jenny Xie interviews Sarah Arvio
[Click here to read the whole article on the website of the Los Angeles Review of Books]
“Poetry and psychoanalysis share a way of thinking: searching, reaching, shifting. They’re both an enactment of the mind, or a dance of the mind. Above all, they share the accidental discovery: the clarifying moment of surprise.”
Culture, mental health, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy
The enduring legacy of Freud – Anna Freud
[Read the whole article on the BBC website]
The legacy of Sigmund Freud – the founder of psychoanalysis is well known. But perhaps less so is the impact his daughter Anna had, and continues to have, on child psychoanalysis. Anna, the youngest of Freud’s six children, was the only one to follow in her father’s footsteps. Her involvement began at the age of just 13, when she took part in her father’s weekly discussions on psychoanalytic ideas. Controversially, she is also believed to have received some informal therapy from her father. By the time of her death in 1982, Anna Freud’s work had revolutionised how we treat children in many walks of life, such as in hospital – with longer visiting hours when children are having treatment – and in the judicial system, where screens and video cameras are used when children have to give evidence. […]