Sclerotherapy in the management of postoperative lymphocele.

Purpose: To describe a single-center experience with sclerotherapy of postoperative lymphocele and to determine the risk factors for failure of treatment.

Materials And Methods: From 1999 to 2007, 43 patients with postsurgical lymphocele were treated with sclerotherapy with a combination of povidone iodine, alcohol, and doxycycline. The treatments were repeated at weekly intervals.

Retrievable vena cava filters in major trauma patients: prevalence of thrombus within the filter.

The purpose of this study was to report the prevalence of thrombus within a retrievable vena cava filter inserted prophylactically in major trauma patients referred for filter extraction. Between November 2002 and August 2005, 80 retrievable inferior vena cava filters (68 Optease and 12 Gunther-Tulip) were inserted into critically injured trauma patients (mean injury severity score 33.5).

How to do a session of experiential psychotherapy.

Each experiential session is to achieve two goals. One is to enable the person to undergo a qualitative shift into being the transformed new person that the person can become. A second goal is for the qualitatively new person to be essentially free of the painful feeling and scene that were front and center for the person in the session.

Introduction to a mythical family: how to do experiential psychotherapy.

Experiential psychotherapy is generally accepted as one of the major families of psychotherapy. One of the main purposes of this introduction to the theme issue is to invite leading proponents and exponents to provide their own answers to the question of how to do experiential psychotherapy, with the emphasis on what would be helpful to students, trainees, and practitioners somewhat familiar with the approach. A second main purpose is to make a case that the very idea of an "experiential family" is a myth.

Efficacy and safety of intravenous immunoglobulin in patients with metastatic melanoma.

We have previously reported studies performed both in vitro and in laboratory animals, as well as a case study in humans, suggesting that intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) may be beneficial in the treatment of malignancies, including metastatic melanoma. As part of a phase II open label trial, we have administered IVIG to nine patients with metastatic melanoma who had been heavily treated. In two of nine (22%) patients treated every 3 weeks with IVIG (1 g/kg body weight), the disease stabilized.

To a large extent, the field got it wrong: New learnings from a new look at an old classic.

On the basis of a new look at Rogers' classic 1957 article (see record 2007-14639-002), the case is that the field missed and misinterpreted the main points. In other words, the field got it wrong. The new look puts five new learnings on the table and considers some of the implications of having consistently got it wrong for half a century or so.

What inspired me to become a psychotherapist?

Six answers are given to the question of why I really became a psychotherapist. Of the six answers, three involve what may be considered inspirational influences: the inspirational benefits of what psychotherapy can offer, inspirational teachers, and inspirational practitioners.

What can the clinician trust--research? Theory? Clinical knowledge?: introduction to a serious problem and preview of some solutions.

This article addresses a serious problem faced by the field of psychotherapy in relying upon and trusting research, theory, clinical knowledge, or other sources as real, hard, and objective. The serious underlying problem is that the field lives and works in an aerie-faerie world composed of ethereal, illusory, false "psychorealities." Although grand solutions have been introduced, none has succeeded in solving the problem.

An experiential alternative to countertransference.

In an experiential alternative, the therapist and the client attend mainly to a "third thing" throughout the session instead of to one another. A case is presented in which the experiential alternative can offer some new, and perhaps interesting, uses of the therapist's personal reactions in comparison with the uses of countertransference and personal reactions of the therapist when therapist and client attend mainly to one another throughout the session. These new uses are presented and illustrated.

So many researchers are sincerely scientific about factitious fictions: some comments on the DSM classification of personality disorders.

Two comments/questions are flagged and discussed in response to an article by E. David Klonsky on the DSM classification of personality disorders: (a) What is a good way to arrive at the categories of the thing you want to categorize? (b) Categorizing some thing has nothing to do with whether the thing is real, but it is an exceedingly clever ploy.

Philosophy of science and the foundations of psychotherapy.

The field of psychotherapy rests on a foundation of basic propositions, fundamental starting points or cornerstones, and ideas that are generally taken for granted as fundamental givens or truths. A case is presented that there are ways in which foundational beliefs may be kept essentially immune from careful explication, study, examination, analysis, and challenge, and therefore from constructive improvement and change. Borrowed largely from the neighboring field of philosophy of science, 5 solutions are presented to assist in explicating, challenging, improving, and changing foundational beliefs.

How to do discovery-oriented psychotherapy research.

A discovery-oriented approach to psychotherapy research relies on discovery-oriented research questions. Four such questions are illustrated, together with the logistics of this approach to research, and the practical working steps in carrying out a program of discovery-oriented research. A case is made for the superior elegance of the discovery-oriented approach to psychotherapy research.

Introduction: How can research discover how to do psychotherapy?

It is almost exceptional that psychotherapy researchers set out to answer questions like these: What are some new and better ways of doing actual in-session psychotherapeutic work? What are some new and better changes that psychotherapy can help bring about, and what are some new and better ways of helping to bring them about? The purpose of this special series of papers is to provide a forum for researchers to tell how to do research to answer those questions, i.e., to present practical and useful methodologies, designs, and strategies that are helpful in answering these questions.

Embarrassing problems for the field of psychotherapy.

A case is presented that the field of psychotherapy has some embarrassing problems that are collectively denied and that it is important for the field to admit they exist so that steps can be taken toward their resolution. A provisional list of 11 problems is proposed, together with suggested avenues toward solution. The invitation is to consider, revise, improve, and extend the list of embarrassing problems in a spirit of open debate and discussion to help advance the field of psychotherapy by enabling efforts toward resolution of these embarrassing problems.

An unabashedly unrealistic wish list for the education and training of psychotherapists.

Proposals for the education and training of psychotherapists are offered in a spirit of constructive good faith, yet they are unabashedly unrealistic in departing from some common canons of education and training. Seven principles are proposed as a suggested starting point for further discussion of the education and training of psychotherapists.

The changing role of the patient in dream work.

Over the past 2000 years or so of interest in dream interpretation, and especially in the last century, the dreamer almost exclusively stood outside the dream, and tried to work out the meaning of the dream. This "outside" position of the patient remained through a variety of approaches. Several approaches have been developed recently in which the person or patient goes "inside" the dream to do the dream work.

The care and feeding of a psychotherapy research team.

Although psychotherapy research teams have been in existence since the 1940s, one of the reasons they are not more popular is the absence of literature on how they operate. There is essentially no literature on the organization and administration of psychotherapy research teams, on the management of their everyday practical issues, decisions, and problems. In order to open the way for a dialogue on these matters, an inside view is provided of one relatively productive psychotherapy research team.