The effectiveness of a hospital-based intervention for patients with substance-use problems in the Western Cape.

District hospitals regularly experience a high incidence of substance use disorders, but rarely provide interventions. We describe the effectiveness of an intervention developed and implemented by a Western Cape hospital. Patients with probable substance use were referred to an on-site social worker for an alcohol, smoking and substance involvement screening test (ASSIST), a brief motivational intervention and referral to specialist care.

An approach to heroin use disorder intervention within the South African context: a content analysis study.

Background: The field of heroin use disorder intervention has been in transition in South Africa since the outbreak of the heroin epidemic. Yet despite growing evidence of an association between heroin users' use of supplementary intervention services and intervention outcomes, heroin use disorder intervention programmes in South Africa generally fail to meet international research-based intervention standards.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews with ten heroin use disorder specialists were conducted and the interviews were subjected to content analysis.

Narcissistic behaviour and the successful conservation of ambivalence.

Central to narcissistic behaviour is the tendency to elicit admiration from others, but it is done in such a high-handed way that these same others are, in time, alienated from the narcissist. This is widely thought to be due to some internal deficit in the narcissist psyche which leads them to fail at what is to them of utmost importance. This paper uses a social rather than an intrapsychic perspective to question the failure hypothesis and to show by means of self-organization theory that the apparent failure can be seen as part of a goal-directed way of conserving an ambivalent autonomy or identity.

Systemic hypnotherapy: deconstructing entrenched ambivalent meanings in self-organizing systems.

Systemic hypnosis is often seen as equivalent to an Ericksonian approach even though they reflect different epistemologies. Second-order articulations of systems theory emphasize the self-organization and autonomy of living systems: all systemic actions are aimed at the conservation of the system's autonomy; loss of autonomy means death as a system. In human systems verbal and non-verbal language reflects the meanings central to the system's autonomy and its conservation.

Being all ears: a systemic perspective on the role of the psychologist in cochlear implantation.

For those hearing-impaired individuals who do not derive any benefit from hearing amplification, cochlear implantation sometimes provides a useful alternative. Recently cochlear implant teams started to incorporate psychological services, mainly as a means to evaluate candidates as to their suitability to receive implants. This paper shows that cochlear implants can have serious and wide-ranging repercussions for the implantee and/or for the family, sometimes necessitating psychotherapeutic services.