What was once essential, may become detrimental: The mediating role of depersonalization in the relationship between childhood emotional maltreatment and psychological distress in adults.

Depersonalization (DP) is a dissociative phenomenon, characterized by feeling "unreal" or detached from one's own emotions, thoughts, and behavior (APA, 2013). It is considered to be a defense mechanism, employed in response to overwhelming events, whereby thoughts and emotions are suppressed in order to enhance the individual's capacity to function in traumatic environments. DP has been found to co-occur with anxiety and depressive disorders, and childhood emotional maltreatment (EM) has been identified as an important predisposing factor. The study's primary aim was to investigate the mediating role of DP in the relationship between childhood EM and psychological distress in young adults. Additionally, it aimed to confirm that a history of childhood EM (emotional abuse and emotional neglect) predicted current levels of DP and to explore how both a person's attitude towards experiencing and expressing emotions (with an emphasis on the affect phobia model) and their current attachment security are related to current DP. A cross-sectional design was employed, which included young adults (N = 761) aged between 18 and 25 years. Participants completed an online survey that comprised of several self-report measures. Regression and mediation analyses were conducted. The results indicated that: (1) DP significantly mediated the relationship between childhood EM and current psychological distress; (2) that a history of EM, but no other forms of childhood abuse, significantly predicted current DP experiences; and (3) EM, attachment-related anxiety, and negative attitudes toward emotions predicted clinical cutoff levels of DP. The results are discussed in detail, including clinical implications and direction for future research.

Learning how to rate video-recorded therapy sessions: a practical guide for trainees and advanced clinicians.

Watching and rating psychotherapy sessions is an important yet often overlooked component of psychotherapy training. This article provides a simple and straightforward guide for using one Website (www.ATOStrainer.com) that provides an automated training protocol for rating of psychotherapy sessions. By the end of the article, readers will be able to have the knowledge to go to the Website and begin using this training method as soon as they have a recorded session to view. This article presents, (a) an overview of the Achievement of Therapeutic Objectives Scale (ATOS; McCullough et al., 2003a), a research tool used to rate psychotherapy sessions; (b) a description of APA training tapes, available for purchase from APA Books, that have been rated and scored by ATOS trained clinicians and posted on the Website; (c) step-by-step procedures on how ratings can be done; (d) an introduction to www.ATOStrainer.com where ratings can be entered and compared with expert ratings; and (e) first-hand personal experiences of the authors using this training method and the benefits it affords both trainees and experienced therapists. This psychotherapy training Website has the potential to be a key resource tool for graduate students, researchers, and clinicians. Our long-range goal is to promote the growth of our understanding of psychotherapy and to improve the quality of psychotherapy provided for patients.

Short term dynamic psychotherapy goes to Hollywood: the treatment of performance anxiety in cinema.

This article uses characters in popular films to demonstrate the theory and application of short term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP) in the treatment of performance anxiety. The reader is taught to identify affect phobias that are hypothesized to underlie performance anxiety. Similar in function to external phobias, affect phobias or internal phobias involve the avoidance of feelings (e.g., fear about feeling anger, shame about showing grief, pain about closeness), which thwarts adaptive responding and generates numerous behavioral problems. STDP treatment focuses on the restructuring of defenses, conflicted affects, and attachments. The resolution of the affect phobia requires systematic desensitization of affective responses (i.e., exposure and desensitization of underlying conflicted feelings). When patients learn to access adaptive forms of feelings, performance anxiety can often be resolved.