comments on Brian Martindale's text Do we have a psychoanalytic understanding of supportive interventions?
Faith
Miles
British Association of Psychotherapists
I have two modest comments to make - modest in scope, that is.
One, I was startled to see there had been no comments so far in response to this thoughtful short paper. The fact that it sits there, as it were, alone and unsupported, seems to bear out something which we have a similar experience of in our own organisation, the British Association of Psychotherapists, in the UK.
We have started up a Discussion page, in the hope that this would allow and encourage members to communicate with each other, particularly those who live too far from our headquarters to participate in the scientific life etc of the organisation. But it has generated very little exchange so far, which is dispiriting. So I am taking the plunge here, in case there are those who are hesitant to join a discussion until someone else has put a mark on the carte blanche.
Secondly,
I am in absolute agreement with Brian Martindale's position. I have just
spent a weekend at the 3rd Joseph Sandler Research Conference "What
works? The current state of the evidence base for psychoanalytically based
treatments." The question of what works is one which we in the UK
at least, cannot avoid, and indeed it has not been ignored in Europe,
the USA or elsewhere, as Brian Martindale's paper makes clear. So why
is it that we are still so wary of sharing ideas about what is, after
all, an old concept? Ego support - in whatever form it takes - is an essential
part of out practice, whether with psychotic patients, as the paper suggests,
in ordinary analytic work or for that matter in any human exchange. I
will leave it there.
