Here we introduce the dissertation program PSAID (Postgraduate Studies for the Advancement of Individual Dissertations), conducted at the International Psychoanalytic University in Berlin, Germany. We tell stories about our experience: about a wish to sum up in a dissertation after long years of clinical practice what has been learnt in diving deeply into human experience; about the fear of losing one’s identity when something new is to be learned, either planning a research study or conducting an interview that has not clinical but research-driven orientations; about the >biography of theory< – what motivates therapists to make a choice between psychoanalysis or cognitive-behavioral therapy; about how the experience of listening changes when you do not hear a voice but read a transcript and understand how many details allude to a relationship and influence your perception and thinking; about the experience of seeing a voice visualized on an audiogram; about summing up certain characteristics of >situations< in the consulting room. We propose not only to distinguish >online/offline< research, but to include >situationism< as a third concept.
La ricerca sulla terapia psicoanalitica 1930-1990. Società di Psicoterapia Psicoanalitica, 44 pp.
(1992)
The concept of countertransference as a robust cornerstone of psychoanalytic work has gained momentum over the last five decades. It is a prime example of elastic concepts covering the range from microprocesses to global clinical phenomena. Empirical research on the treatment process has for a long time – and for good reasons – avoided even trying to measure countertransference. We report here on various efforts for approaching a methodology for measuring it. The paper organizes the various approaches in terms of stages of research.