Broadening the vision: a case for community-based psychoanalysis in the context of usual practice.

A case is made for community-based psychoanalysis as part of usual psychoanalytic practice. A safe community is first defined psychodynamically, after which three variations are presented on the community-based style and qualities and modes of practice compared with individual psychoanalytic therapy and psychoanalysis. Three community case studies, from Jamaica and the U.

Victimization, aggression, and visits to the school nurse for somatic complaints, illnesses, and physical injuries.

Objective: To examine how involvement in aggressor-victim interactions is linked to somatic complaints, illnesses, and physical injuries among elementary school-aged children.

Study Design: This study was composed of a school-based sample of 590 children in grades 3 through 5. Independent sources were used to assess victimization (self-report) and aggression (peer report) in the fall semester.

A cluster randomized controlled trial of child-focused psychiatric consultation and a school systems-focused intervention to reduce aggression.

Background: While school-based anti-bullying programs are widely used, there have been few controlled trials of effectiveness. This study compared the effect of manualized School Psychiatric Consultation (SPC), CAPSLE (a systems and mentalization focused whole school intervention), and treatment-as-usual (TAU) in reducing aggression and victimization among elementary school children.

Method: Participants were 1,345 third to fifth graders in nine elementary schools in a medium-sized Midwestern city who took part in a cluster-level randomized controlled trial with stratified restricted allocation, to assess efficacy after two years of active intervention and effectiveness after one year of minimal input maintenance intervention.

Leadership and regressive group processes: a pilot study.

Various perspectives on leadership within the psychoanalytic, organizational and sociobiological literature are reviewed, with particular attention to research studies in these areas. Hypotheses are offered about what makes an effective leader: her ability to structure tasks well in order to avoid destructive regressions, to make constructive use of the omnipresent regressive energies in group life, and to redirect regressions when they occur. Systematic qualitative observations of three videotaped sessions each from N = 18 medical staff work groups at an urban medical center are discussed, as is the utility of a scale, the Leadership and Group Regressions Scale (LGRS), that attempts to operationalize the hypotheses.

Embodying the mind: movement as a container for destructive aggression.

Violent, nonmentalizing individuals who act out aggression do not usually respond to verbal therapeutic approaches alone. We suggest the movement in physically oriented therapies, such as yoga and martial arts, combined with psychodynamic psychotherapy are critical in reaching these individuals. We also suggest embodiment as a direct link to the kinesthetic core of easily disturbed attachment experiences.

Teachers who bully students: a hidden trauma.

Objective: The study examined teachers' perceptions of bullying by other teachers to see what causes and characteristics were attributed to such bullying teachers, and how often teachers were themselves bullied by students.

Method: 116 teachers from seven elementary schools completed an anonymous questionnaire reflecting their feelings and perceptions about their own experiences of bullying, and how they perceive colleagues over the years.

Results: Results confirmed that teachers who experienced bullying themselves when young are more likely to both bully students and experience bullying by students both in classrooms and outside the classroom.

A developmental approach to mentalizing communities: II. The Peaceful Schools experiment.

This paper summarizes a theoretical argument for the use of a mentalization-based approach to the systemic problem of school bullying. The Peaceful Schools Project of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine, is an experimental test of this model. Data is presented from a randomized controlled trial of this intervention in nine elementary schools in the Midwest.

A developmental approach to mentalizing communities: I. A model for social change.

A developmental model is proposed applying attachment theory to complex social systems to promote social change. The idea of mentalizing communities is outlined with a proposal for three projects testing the model: ways to reduce bullying and create a peaceful climate in schools, projects to promote compassion in cities by a focus of end-of-life care, and a mentalization-based intervention into parenting style of borderline and substance abusing parents.

The prevalence of teachers who bully students in schools with differing levels of behavioral problems.

Objective: This study looked for a relationship between the prevalence of teachers who bully students and school behavioral problems reflected in suspensions from school.

Method: A convenience sample of 214 teachers answered an anonymous questionnaire about their perceptions of teachers who bully students and their own practices. Teachers were grouped into whether they taught at schools with low, medium, or high rates of suspensions.

Creating a peaceful school learning environment: the impact of an antibullying program on educational attainment in elementary schools.

Background: The impact of a bullying and violence prevention program on education attainment was studied in five elementary schools (K-5), over a 5-year period.

Material/methods: A multiple baseline design was used and academic attainment test scores of 1,106 students were monitored before and after the introduction of the program across the school district. This sample was contrasted with an equivalent control sample of 1,100 students from the school district who attended schools that did not join the program.

The role of the bystander in the social architecture of bullying and violence in schools and communities.

The bystander is defined as an active and involved participant in the social architecture of school violence, rather than a passive witness. Bullying is redefined from a triadic (bully-victim-bystander) rather than dyadic (bully-victim) perspective. Teachers, including administrators, and students can promote or ameliorate bullying and other forms of violence when in this social role.

Negative affect in victimized children: the roles of social withdrawal, peer rejection, and attitudes toward bullying.

This study evaluated the validity of mediating pathways in predicting self-assessed negative affect from shyness/social withdrawal, peer rejection, victimization by peers (overt and relational), and the attitude that aggression is legitimate and warranted. Participants were 296 3rd through 5th graders (156 girls, 140 boys) from 10 elementary schools. Self-report measures of victimization, attitudes, and negative affect, and a teacher-report measure of shyness/social withdrawal and peer rejection were completed during the spring semesters of 2 consecutive years.

A crucible for murder: the social context of violent children and adolescents.

The author describes aspects of social context that are of importance in the genesis of murderous violence in children and adolescents. Case presentations illustrate the effects of family attachment pathology, differing outcomes in destructive children, and the copycat phenomenon. The author concludes by summarizing the continuum of responses of children and adolescents to various forms of threat: real attack, unconscious threat, kindled threat, suppressed threat, bully-victim-bystander sadomasochistic ritual attack, and peer-group-validated threat.

Assessing adolescents who threaten homicide in schools.

Psychoanalytic and psychiatric perspectives on children who threaten to kill others are reviewed in the context of the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problem. Converging technologies derived from a psychoanalytically informed social systems model are compared to law enforcement approaches, psychoanalytic understanding of the individual dynamics of the child, and empirical research on conduct disordered adolescents. The interdisciplinary orientation of a broadly trained community psychoanalyst allows a unique contribution when trying to distinguish adolescents who make a threat from those who pose a threat.

Interviewing violent patients.

A clinical attitude to the interview of violent patients is outlined, which enables maximum safety for the clinician and usefulness of the interview findings. This approach emphasizes careful monitoring of subjective states in the patient and clinician. The author suggests an emphasis on clinical knowledge of the DSM-IV and psychodynamic diagnoses of potentially violent psychiatric patients; self-awareness of transference and countertransference; and self-care including attention to personal physical and emotional needs, de-escalation, and self-defense skills.

Creating a peaceful school learning environment: a controlled study of an elementary school intervention to reduce violence.

Objective: The impact of a manual-based antiviolence program on the learning climate in an elementary school over 4 years was compared with the outcome in a control school.

Method: The two schools were matched for demographic characteristics. The intervention in the experimental school was based on zero tolerance for bullying; the control school received only regular psychiatric consultation.

Training psychotherapists in attributes of "mind" from Zen and psychoanalytic perspectives, Part II: Attention, here and now, nonattachment, and compassion.

Part II of this paper enumerates four additional attributes of mind derived from Zen that could enrich the training of a psychotherapist. These include: training and modulation of the therapist's attention, the centrality of the concept of "here and now," what it is and is not, and the natural unpressured emergence of compassion as a manifestation of the therapist's nature.

Training psychotherapists in attributes of "mind" from Zen and psychoanalytic perspectives, Part I: Core principles, emptiness, impermanence, and paradox.

This paper outlines the principles of a conceptual foundation for an innovative approach to the training of the modern psychotherapist, using certain technical and philosophical percepts found in the practice of Zen, divorced from its usual role as a form of Buddhism and/or a religious belief. A set of core principles derived from Zen and embedded in psychoanalytic theory are listed. Specific values are embodied in the day to day practice of the psychotherapist.