In treatment, the psychotherapist is in a position of power. Often, this power is unintentionally abused. While trying to embody a compassionate concern for patients, therapists use accepted techniques that can inadvertently lead to control, indoctrination, and therapeutic failure. Contrary to the stated tradition and values of psychotherapy, they subtly coerce patients rather than respect and genuinely help them.
In treatment, the psychotherapist is in a position of power. Often, this power is unintentionally abused. While trying to embody a compassionate concern for patients, therapists use accepted techniques that can inadvertently lead to control, indoctrination, and therapeutic failure. Contrary to the stated tradition and values of psychotherapy, they subtly coerce patients rather than respect and genuinely help them. The more gross kinds of patient abuse, deliberate ones such as sexual and financial exploitation, are expressly forbidden by professional organizations. However, there are no regulations discouraging the more covert forms of manipulation, which are not even considered exploitative by many clinicians. In this book, noted psychiatrist Theo. L. Dorpat strongly disagrees. Using a contemporary interactional perspective Dorpat demonstrates the destructive potential of manipulation and indoctrination in treatment. This book is divided into three parts. Part I explores the various ways power can be abused. Part II examines eleven treatment cases in which covert manipulation and control either caused analytic failure or severely impaired the treatment process. Cases discussed include the analyses of Dora and the Wolf Man by Freud, the two analyses of Mr. Z by Kohut, as well as other published and unpublished treatments. An interactional perspective is used to examine the harmful short- and long-term effects of using indoctrination methods as well as to unravel conscious and unconscious communications between therapists and patients that can contribute to manipulations. Part III shows readers how to work using a non-directive, egalitarian approach in both psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
Interdisciplinary Essays on Cannibalism: Bites Here and There brings together a range of works exploring the evolution of cannibalism, literally and metaphorically, diachronically and across disciplines. This edited collection aims to promote a conversation on the evolution and the different uses of the tropes and figures of cannibalism, in order to understand and deconstruct the fascination with anthropophagy, its continued afterlife and its relation to different disciplines and spaces of discourse. In order to do so, the contributing authors shed a new light not only on the concept, but also propose to explore cannibalism through new optics and theories. Spanning 15 chapters, the collection explores cannibalism across disciplines and fields from Antiquity to contemporary speculative fiction, considering history, anthropology, visual and film studies, philosophy, feminist theories, psychoanalysis and museum practices. This collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking scholarly contributions suggests the importance of cannibalism in understanding human history and social relations.
www.richardraubolt.com An intense account of the misuse of power in psychotherapeutic training that offers solutions to this urgent issue. Over the course of his own training in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, Richard Raubolt came to see that advanced training is more often than not plagued by authoritarian practices, some subtle and many pronounced. It is the contention of Raubolt and his contributors that these practices instill fear and foster blind obedience to the favored proclivities of the leaders of the training institute. In turn, this subservience, which seeps into the therapeutic relationship, prevents both the training candidates and their prospective patients from developing creative, authentic, and meaningful experiences. This is a book written from the perspective of scholars and experienced clinicians who are acutely aware both on a personal and theoretical level of the disruptive role of power games in psychoanalytic institutes. The collection features a highly nuanced and comprehensively developed psychoanalytic understanding of the use and misuse of power, authority, status, and control operating in many traditional and nontraditional training experiences. Finally, new supervisory and training models based on empathy, respect for subjective experiences, and democratic principles are proposed as an alternative to the abusive practices so powerfully described in this book.
Emotional Incest in Group Psychotherapy: A Conspiracy of Silence is unique in the field of analytic group psychotherapy. Many books assume that the frame of therapy, the boundary between what is and isn’t therapy, is a given. This book treats the frame as a variable, showing that alterations to the frame have consequences. A moral dilemma exists when leaders choose to operate outside the ethics and wisdom of the field. The spoken directive to "say everything" is obviated by the unspoken directive not to, and hence a conspiracy of silence is created. There is potential for iatrogenic treatment reactions, constituting an abuse of power. There are at least seven dangers of blurring the boundary between therapy and not therapy: 1. Breaches of confidentiality; 2. Looping; 3. The pass along effect; 4. Gaslighting; 5. Overstimulation; 6. ‘The emperor’s new clothes’ effect; and 7. Scapegoating. Emotional Incest in Group Psychotherapy illustrates the need to avoid these seven dangers and effectively help therapists work within the group setting. Professional organizations that provide the opportunity for members to openly address their concerns about blurred boundaries in group treatment can help to mitigate their negative effects.
A philosopher examines the complicated phenomenon of gaslighting “Gaslighting” is suddenly in everyone’s vocabulary. It’s written about, talked about, tweeted about, even sung about (in “Gaslighting” by The Chicks). It’s become shorthand for being manipulated by someone who insists that up is down, hot is cold, dark is light—someone who isn’t just lying about such things, but trying to drive you crazy. The term has its origins in a 1944 film in which a husband does exactly that to his wife, his crazy-making efforts symbolized by the rise and fall of the gaslights in their home. In this timely and provocative book, Kate Abramson examines gaslighting from a philosophical perspective, investigating it as a distinctive moral phenomenon. Gaslighting, Abramson writes, is best understood as a form of interpersonal interaction, a particular way of fundamentally undermining someone. The gaslighter, Abramson argues, aims to make his target experience herself as incapable of reasoning, perceiving, or reacting in ways that would allow her to form appropriate beliefs, perceptions, or emotions in the first place. He seeks not only to induce in her this unmoored sense of herself but also to make it a reality. Using examples and analysis, Abramson gives an account of gaslighting and its immorality, and argues that such a discussion can help us understand other aspects of social life—from racism and sexism to the structure of interpersonal trust.
In Psychotherapy Reflections a psychoanalytically-informed patient describes his feelings about his therapeutic relationship and critically examines selected therapy sessions from a nine-month course of treatment. Many texts about psychotherapy are based either on patient narratives or on a clinical model. Psychotherapy Reflections, however, combines patient narrative with probing insight and dream analysis based on the work of noted dream researcher Stanley R. Palombo, M.D., who has shown that dreams serve an information-processing function by matching present and past experience in determining what information will be filtered through for storage in permanent memory.
The purpose of this book, Techniques for Manipulation and Mind Control: A Comprehensive Academic Analysis, is to explore these intricate dynamics in detail, offering both theoretical and practical insights into the many ways in which human thought, behavior, and decision-making can be influenced. This work provides a holistic view of manipulation, starting from its historical roots to its contemporary applications in media, politics, marketing, and interpersonal relationships. At the same time, the book highlights ethical concerns and questions that arise when individuals or institutions exert undue influence over others, especially in ways that undermine autonomy and free will.
Have you ever heard of a person who left you wondering, "How could someone be so twisted? So evil?" Prompted by clues in her sister’s diary after her mysterious death, author Barbara Oakley takes the reader inside the head of the kinds of malevolent people you know, perhaps all too well, but could never understand. Starting with psychology as a frame of reference, Oakley uses cutting-edge images of the working brain to provide startling support for the idea that "evil" people act the way they do mainly as the result of a dysfunction. In fact, some deceitful, manipulative, and even sadistic behavior appears to be programmed genetically—suggesting that some people really are born to be bad. Oakley links the latest findings of molecular research to a wide array of seemingly unrelated historical and current phenomena, from the harems of the Ottomans and the chummy jokes of "Uncle Joe" Stalin, to the remarkable memory of investor Warren Buffet. Throughout, she never loses sight of the personal cost of evil genes as she unravels the mystery surrounding her sister’s enigmatic life—and death. Evil Genes is a tour-de-force of popular science writing that brilliantly melds scientific research with intriguing family history and puts both a human and scientific face to evil.
