The laying on of health: personality patterns of psychic healers.

Twenty-six psychic healers who claimed to heal by way of touch were studied with psychological tests to see whether they had personality characteristics in common. The consistencies they showed could be conceptualized in a way that sheds light on the nature of all healing.

Dermatitis artefacta. Case reports.

Patients who seek care for foot problems may present to the podiatrist with concurrent problems, such as anxiety, depression, phobias, personality disorders, and psychoses. These may or may not have any direct relationship to the pathogenesis of the foot problem. The podiatrist may learn of the presence of an emotional problem directly from the patient or from a family member. In many cases, the patient may be unaware or deny the presence of an emotional problem, leaving the podiatric physician in the dark about the patient's mental health state or its implications for the management of the skin problem. In a review of the psychosomatic aspects of dermatology, Koblenzer offered a working classification of the psychodermatoses. This is helpful to the podiatrist in recognizing those dermatologic disease states in which the various aspects of the individual participate in the disease, signs and symptoms of the disease, and the potential psychological value of the disease for the patient. It is also helpful to the podiatrist for recognizing those dermatoses in which psychiatric consultation may be useful so that recognition, treatment, improvement, and perhaps cure may be effected quickly.

Evils in the private practice of psychotherapy.

The private, and especially solo, practice of psychotherapy often poses conflicts of interest between patient and therapist, which, because of the field's ambiguities and equivocal guidelines, may tend to be resolved in favor of the therapist and to the detriment of the treatment. The author delineates these potential conflicts so that awareness and training can minimize their pernicious effects.

The relationship between assessment and psychotherapy.

The many arguments, pro and con, about the usefulness and roles of diagnosis in general, and a psychological test battery in particular, can be settled only with reference to particular tests, a particular tester, particular patients, with reference to particular questions, in a particular context. Psychologists need to establish the usefulness of tests in cost-effective ways and demonstrate how tests provide a means of studying the mind. It follows that all psychotherapists should be able to use the tests, as all physiologists should be able to use a microscope. The rule of thumb that therapists should not give tests to their patients is unnecessary, though it is preferable that the tests be given early in the relationship, and that patients have the opportunity to explore their reactions to the procedure. To maximize the usefulness of tests given by someone who is not the patient's therapist, the test report should be designed as a means of persuasion toward therapeutic action more than a passive report of findings. An outline for test report writing is suggested. Finally, the use of tests helps elucidate the many factors that contribute to change through psychotherapy.

Self-help with diagnosis (a self-administered semi-projective device).

Studied the validity of a self-administered semi-projective packet of tests and questionnaires developed to provide quick, inexpensive information preparatory, or ancillary, to further diagnostic examinations. Brief writeups of inferences derived from the packet of tests were compared to diagnostic inferences based on from one to three psychiatric interviews, and with full examinations, which included psychiatric and social work interviews and extensive psychological testing. Generally, high comparability between the packet and both criteria were shown on questions of global diagnostic impression, character and defense, central conflicts, and basic ego functions; and significant information was often added by the packet to the data collected in diagnostic interviews. The patients filled out the packet forms conscientiously, and their written self-reports indicated that some patients could learn and otherwise benefit just from performing this task.

The idealization of insight.

Psychoanalysts tend to idealize the classic model of technique, central to which is the development of insight through interpretation. This is so even though from Freud onward they have realized the inapplicability of this model to many kinds of people and clinical exigencies. As a consequence of this idealization, other factors which plausibly contribute to change, and other elements in the psychotherapeutic situation within and outside of the mainstream of psychoanalytic technique, have been inadequately exploited theoretically and clinically. These include the roles of affect, action, and will; the meaning of insight to the patient and insight as a defense against change; some dangers of insight; factors common to all psychotherapy; and the interpersonal relationship. In this paper I discuss these variables and issues, with reference to case examples, suggest that this sociopsychological problems for psychoanalysis can be understood with reference to some aspects of history of psychoanalysis, and suggest some options and opportunities.