Phenomenological Psychology

Review of Smith, S., Gorske, T., Wiggins, C. & Little, J.  “Personality Assessment Use by Clinical Neuropsychologists.” International Journal of Testing, 10(1), 6 – 20. Neuroscientists now are on the verge of developing persuasive etiologies for complex psychopathology such as schizophrenia and personality disorder spectra.  They have identified precise genetic and neurochemical contributors with highly granulated [...]

Review of Wise, E., Streiner, D. & Walfish, S. (2010).  “A Review and Comparison of the Reliabilities of the MMPI-2, MCMI-III, and PAI Presented in Their Respective Test Manuals.”  Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 42(4), 246 – 254. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test originally was developed in 1939 and amended from time-to-time [...]

Review of Leucht, S., Komossa, K., Rummel-Kluge, C., Corves, C., Hunger, H., Schmid, F., Lobos C., Schwarz, S. & Davis, J. (2009).  ”A Meta-Analysis of Head-to-Head Comparisons of Second-Generation Antipsychotics in the Treatment of Schizophrenia.”  Am. J. Psychiatry, 166, 152 – 163. One of the earliest drugs to treat schizophrenia was chlorpromazine (thorazine), discovered by [...]

Review of Weintraub, D., Buchsbaum, R, Resor, S. & Hirsch, L. (2006).  ”Psychiatric and behavioral side effects of the newer antiepileptic drugs in adults with epilepsy.”  Epilepsy and Behavior, 10, 105 – 110. In addition to being a great writer, Dostoyevsky had temporal lobe epilepsy (“TLE”).  His ecstatic seizures gave him a capacity for mystical [...]

Review of Hobson, J. A. (2009) “REM sleep and dreaming – towards a theory of protoconsciousness,” Nature Reviews – Neuroscience, 10, 803 – 184. In “The Interpretation of Dreams” and elsewhere, Freud famously argued that dreams express unconscious wishes and desires. One of the reasons why Freud found dreams so interesting is because he thought [...]

Review of Frie, R. & Reis, B. (2001) “Understanding Intersubjectivity: Psychoanalytic Formulations and Their Philosophical Underpinnings,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 37, 297 – 327. Carl Jung is well-known for his theory of the “collective unconscious,” which is a “psychic system of a collective, universal and impersonal nature identical in all individuals.” Unfortunately Jung also believed the collective unconscious actually [...]

Review of Kudlur, S., George, S. & Jaimon, M. (2007), “An overview of the neurological correlates of Cotard syndrome,” Eur. J. Psychiat. 21(2), 99 – 116. Even though not mentioned in DSM-IV-TR, hands down Cotard’s Delusion (CD; also known as Cotard’s Syndrome) wins the competition for the most interesting psychiatric disorder around.  Discovered (some might [...]

Review of Harrison, G., Poliakoff, M., Parker, M., Boynes, M. & Hudson, J. (2007) “Is dissociative amnesia a culture-bound syndrome?” Psychological Medicine 27(2), 225- 233. Culture-bound syndromes (CBS) present some of the most interesting pathology of contemporary mental disorders.  DSM-IV-TR lists 24 of them at Appendix I p. 897.  A CBS primarily considers “the role [...]

This is a dreadful book. Prof. Ingram does not believe in any of the therapeutic techniques or modalities that have been developed as psychology has evolved as a discipline. Rather she has created her own version of psychotherapy with its own approach, orientation and jargon. There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of any [...]

One of the current trends or fads in psychotherapy is the concept of “immediacy.”  Rather than concentrating on the client’s issues during session the therapist is supposed to ask questions like “How do you experience what I’ve just said?”, “Are you satisfied with this direction in our conversation?”, “How am I doing now?” and even [...]