Levina's "Face of the Other"
Emmanuel Levinas' concept of the **"face of the Other"** is a central idea in his philosophy, emphasizing ethics as the foundation of human existence. Here’s an overview of the concept: ### 1. **The...
Psychotherapy Practice
The Psychotherapeutic Journey Towards a Mature Psyche: Melanie Klein's Psychoanalytic Theory
Melanie Klein emphasises the role of unconscious defence mechanisms in shaping our perceptions of the world and ourselves. This essay will delve into the core tenets of Klein's theory, focusing on...
Early Conceptualisation of Gestalt Therapy’s Understanding of Introjection
Gestalt therapy, a distinctive form of psychotherapy, developed by Lore and Fritz Perls, offers a nuanced approach to understanding and facilitating human growth and development. This method emerged...
Self-Criticism: Adam Phillips
Adam Phillips, argues that self-criticism stems from our ambivalence towards ourselves. We all have mixed feelings about ourselves, but ambivalence goes beyond that. It's about having opposing...
Bassat: Linking Immunology with Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy
The groundbreaking metaphor of "the body keeps the score," found in trauma research, aligns seamlessly with Bassat's article exploring the profound impact of embryonic experiences on human...
The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Process: Nancy McWilliams
https://youtu.be/NNvTjWKa5VQ?si=qJz61cAeoB8RfmME This lecture by Nancy McWilliams delves into the intricacies of psychodynamic diagnosis, exploring the complexities beyond the DSM and offering...
How does Psychotherapy Work? General Systems Theory and Synchronization
How do we explain the transformative work of psychotherapy? The therapist and client of the psychotherapeutic encounter do not exist in an isolated bubble; both exist integrated with the environment...
What’s behind the transforming power of dialogue?
**Exploring the Power of Dialogue** Dialogue extends beyond mere verbal communication; it's a profound act of connection. At the core of genuine dialogue lies the "I-Thou" relationship. Could this...
Unconscious feelings and countertransference within the Therapeutic Alliance
To illustrate how a therapist’s emotions towards client, though brought to awareness and allowed to be revealed, can also be mistaken for authentic reaction to the client’s process, a mentor of mine,...
The change moments in psychotherapeutic practice
The challenge with humanistic psychotherapy today is to realize the philosophical concepts and theory put into practice. How do we see an [I-thou moment...
Healing through dialogue is an eminently hermeneutical phenomenon indeed
> **“Healing through dialogue is an eminently hermeneutical phenomenon indeed.” ** > **Gadamer, quoted in Staemmler (2009, p. 65). ** The psychotherapeutic alliance is a dialogue which is action....
Empathy and Buber’s I-thou contact
I do not fully agree with Schmid’s implication that empathy is about “try(ing) to understand, as exactly as possible, the accurate meaning of what goes on inside another person in the very moment”....
What lies within the therapist-client alliance in Psychotherapy?
The “self” is not a singular, isolated entity, but a function of the person’s life history and experience from living with others through social interactions from which the individual derives their...
Contact & inter-subjectivity: the definition of the self in the therapeutic relationship
“The patient’s unconscious and repressed desires and fears are constantly seeking release or, more precisely, contact with real persons and situations.” (Reich, 1945/1984, p. 5) This relational...
Psychotherapy: The Active Ingredient Is The Transpersonal Therapeutic Relationship
Looking at the therapeutic alliance, how does psychotherapy work? This is an excerpt from my thesis (Chew-Helbig, 2017). The therapeutic relationship is multifaceted. Many authors like Clarkson...
Levels in a psychotherapeutic relationship
Clarkson (2003) defines a five-relational framework of the psychotherapeutic relationship. That which seems to be consistent in all approaches in psychotherapy, Clarkson teased out into what seems...
What do Gestalt Therapists do?
Gestalt therapy is an effective and efficacious form of psychotherapy (Roubal, 2016). Gestalt psychotherapy is practised by certified psychotherapists trained and supervised in the modality. Anyone...
Why body-awareness is integral to the psychotherapeutic process
Psychotherapy is healing through the psyche. What is the psyche really? Does it reside in the brain? Not only. However, if it were so, then what is the brain? The brain is an inseparable part of the...
Short Definitions of Relatedness and Relationship
## Relationship The relationship is an encounter sustained in the long term, a chain of meetings that includes a shared perspective of shared history and shared present because there is free will to...
Dreams and Dreamwork in Psychotherapy
The publication *[On...
Hoarding Disorder
Definition of hoarding disorder: the extensive collection of objects followed by difficulty discarding them for aesthetic reasons, or because of an object’s emotional value or consideration of its...
Humiliation, Shame and Violence
This is a presentation I gave some years ago on the connection on antisocial violent behavior in some men, and how researchers (in this article I feature the work of J. Gilligan) have learnt how...
Kernberg: Working with the Antisocial and Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder Spectrum
Kernberg (2008) writes that for the treatment of any case in which antisocial features of the [personality disorder](https://nikhelbig.at/normal-personality-vs-personality-disorders/) (PD) are...
Projective Identification
Otto Kernberg explains what [Projective...
Who is Psychotherapy for?
Notice that this question starts not with the "what" but with the "who". How psychotherapy works is unlike in other medical fields, in which the doctor does the healing "work" while the patient lies...