Psychology Research Digest
Psychoanalytic Psychology - Vol 43, Iss 3
Psychoanalytic Psychology serves as a resource for original contributions that reflect and broaden the interaction between psychoanalysis and psychology.
Introduction to the proceedings of the 63rd annual meeting of the Rapaport–Klein Study Group.
The Rapaport–Klein Study Group, comprising students and associates of seminal psychoanalytic psychologists David Rapaport and George S. Klein, as well as colleagues of this initial core group, meets annually at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to discuss central conceptual and empirical issues in psychoanalytic theory. The 2025 meeting began with a keynote presentation by Mark Solms on his Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Presentations at the meeting by Wilma Bucci, Anne Erreich, Jerome Wakefield, and Joel Weinberger then considered conceptual and empirical issues regarding the unconscious, unconscious mental states, and unconscious representations in light of current conceptions in philosophy of mind and of current scientific research on these issues, mainly in areas like cognitive science, developmental psychology, and neuroscience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The unconscious: History, research, neurocognitive models, and clinical implications.
This article offers an overview of unconscious processes. We begin with factors that delayed their scientific study within academic psychology, which we trace to Cartesian identification of the mind with conscious awareness, later reinforced by behaviorism’s dismissal of internal processes altogether. Although psychoanalysis, by contrast, emphasized unconscious processes from its inception, its isolation from academia and its general aversion to empirical science limited its impact on academia. In turn, Popper’s (1959, first published in German in 1934) rejection of psychoanalysis led to a complementary disregard in academic psychology for psychoanalysis. Academic psychology eventually came to recognize the ubiquity and adaptive nature of unconscious processes, seeing them as intrinsic to how the mind/brain evolved to process information. We review several domains of academic research and link their findings to clinical theory and practice. We conclude by examining three major neurocognitive models from a metapsychological perspective. All of these models have unconscious, parallel, and associative processing at their core. They also all require contradiction, conflict, and compromise. We argue for a reconceptualization of the unconscious as a normative, adaptive, and essential dimension of psychological functioning that mostly works well but that contains processes that can go awry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Freud as philosopher: Tactics in the argument for unconscious mental states.
In this article, I present an analysis of the tactics used by Sigmund Freud in his momentous argument for the existence of unconscious mental states in the descriptive sense, distinct from his argument for the dynamic unconscious. The argument was essentially a philosophical argument on a topic that had been debated by philosophers for over two centuries. The tactics in his argument include the embrace of representationalism about the mind, turning psychophysical parallelism on its head, holding that all mental processes are essentially unconscious, postulating an unknown physical nature of the essence of the mental, and interpreting consciousness as perceptual awareness of one’s unconscious mental contents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Modes of expression in the therapeutic discourse: A multiple code account.
Bringing experience to awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for therapeutic work. The patient needs to enter the networks of memory and knowledge, access relevant experience, and bring it into a form that can be communicated verbally. According to multiple code theory, the particular difficulties of this process reflect the diverse nature of human mental functions, which include nonsymbolic, as well as symbolic forms. The difficulties of connecting these forms of representation apply to many areas of knowledge, not emotional experience only; the difficulties are far greater and of a different nature for the type of painful experience that brings patients to treatment. The neural mechanisms of response to painful and threatening experience interfere with the process of memory retrieval and reorganization; this sets the challenge for therapeutic work. The multiple code theory, with its associated concepts of the emotion schemas and the referential process, provides a theoretical framework for this process that is compatible with current theory and research in cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and related fields. Computerized measures of the therapeutic discourse, including nonverbal as well as verbal components, are available for psychotherapy research and for direct application in clinical work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>How do we know when we’re wrong? The corrective function of data from other disciplines.
This article explores the corrective function of data from other disciplines in formulating psychoanalytic theory. It addresses the challenge of validating psychoanalytic constructs and theories, given the lack of consensually agreed-upon criteria within the field. The article argues that incorporating findings from adjacent disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary theory can help ascertain the plausibility of both earlier and recent psychoanalytic formulations. To illustrate the importance of extra-analytic data, the article examines the notions of unformulated and unrepresented experience, as posited by D. B. Stern and by Levine, respectively, as the cause of significant psychopathology. In reviewing findings from neighboring disciplines, especially data on the innate capacity for mental representation and memory in infants, the article demonstrates the flaws in their arguments regarding unrepresented or unformulated experience as primary pathogenic factors in adults. The view of infant development espoused herein contradicts classical Freudian and Kleinian notions of development wherein infant mentation is innately primitive in a variety of ways: by being prerepresentational, unsymbolized, or filled with distortions from splits, mergers, or paranoid–schizoid ideation. Against these beliefs stand research findings that demonstrate that the infant’s representation of subjective experience is innately accurate but becomes increasingly distorted by protective revisions as an infant marinates in the demands and prohibitions of the social surround and struggles to develop safe, stable attachments to important figures. The article concludes that psychoanalytic theories must align with findings from related disciplines to remain plausible and relevant. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Did Strachey falsely scientize Freud?
James Strachey, the editor and translator of the Standard Edition of Freud’s complete psychological works, is widely accused of “falsely scientizing” Freud—of making him read more like a natural scientist in English than he does in German. In this (copyedited) transcript of a lecture that he gave on this subject, Mark Solms, Strachey’s successor as editor of the Revised Standard Edition, considers the basis for this widespread criticism. He concludes that it is unfounded, as it disregards crucial differences in the linguistic conventions of German and English scientific writing. The article also comments on some other aspects of the editorial policies that he followed when preparing this new edition of Freud’s psychological writings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Family creation in lesbian couples: A psychodynamic perspective on triangulation.
This article examines the psychodynamic concept of triangulation in German lesbian couples with children through sperm donation. Triangulation in psychodynamic theory often refers to a triadic relationship between mother, father, and a child and is significantly influenced by heteronormative and patriarchal family conceptions. Modern and queer family systems have not been integrated sufficiently into theoretical psychodynamic concepts, and lesbian women are underrepresented in relevant studies. With the help of a semistructured interview, the psychological experiences of lesbian mothers forming their own families in Germany are examined: Twelve lesbian couples share their perception on motherhood identity, parenthood, family roles, attachment to their children, and the role of the sperm donor. The responses were then coded and structured according to triangulation processes within the families and with the sperm donor. The findings demonstrate that mechanisms of triangulation arise from intersubjective relations, independent of parental gender, and thereby underscore the capacity of nonheteronormative families to foster healthy psychological growth and triangulation. These results should be included in the contemporary discourse of psychodynamic constructs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Haunting traumas: Motherhood in wartime through the lenses of past and current traumas.
Previous trauma can have a massive effect on current experience of exposure to a traumatic event, especially in more vulnerable periods of the life cycle, such as being a mother or a grandmother to young children/grandchildren during wartime. This study uses two modes of inquiry: first, a clinical case study illustrating how personal, intergenerational, and national traumas intertwine and impact present experiences, as revealed in therapeutic sessions with a soldier’s mother; second, a qualitative study conducted through interviews with 35 mothers aged 28–73, of whom 19 shared past traumas they described as influencing their experiences following the October 7, 2023, terror attack and the subsequent Israel–Hamas war. A thematic analysis of the interviews identified three key themes capturing the mothers’ experiences of the current trauma in view of previous traumas: (a) childhood trauma meets current trauma, (b) historical trauma meets current trauma, and (c) fear of children being haunted by the current trauma. The findings from these two complementary modes of inquiry shed light on the complex challenges faced by mothers during wartime, influenced by past traumas. They emphasize the interplay between their inner child and their identity as responsible parents, illustrating how their role as mothers provides them with meaning and enhances their coping abilities. Clinically, the study calls for the need for recognition and legitimacy to the different self-states and the needs that accompany them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Assessing parental mentalizing and nonmentalizing in ordinary clinical practice using a multidimensional clinician observation measure.
Parents’ curiosity about and attunement to their child’s mental states significantly predict parenting behaviors and child outcomes. As a result, parental mentalizing is increasingly targeted as a transdiagnostic mechanism of change in evidence-based mental health interventions. In diverse clinical contexts, particularly with highly stressed and underresourced families, reducing parental nonmentalizing has emerged as a key marker of treatment effectiveness. However, effective assessment of mentalizing and nonmentalizing in real-time, high-arousal contexts remains challenging, as gold standard methods require time-consuming coding of transcripts or videos. This study introduces the Short Parental Observation Tool for Mentalizing, developed to assess both parental mentalizing and nonmentalizing during intensive home-based treatment for socially and economically marginalized families with high trauma exposure and psychopathology. The Short Parental Observation Tool for Mentalizing integrates 2 decades of conceptual and empirical findings to structure observations of parental mentalizing and nonmentalizing in both language and behavior. The results support the proposed four-factor structure, indicating that mentalizing and nonmentalizing expressed through language and behavior are related but distinct constructs. The Short Parental Observation Tool for Mentalizing demonstrated good psychometric properties, including sensitivity, internal consistency, and interrater reliability. The study discusses the tool’s strengths, limitations, and implications, offering a practical, reliable method for assessing parental mentalizing in demanding clinical settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>When the “frame” expands: Cocreated analytic space and the altered therapeutic process since COVID-19.
This phenomenological study interviewed 17 psychodynamic and psychoanalytically oriented therapists in New York City regarding their initial shift to teletherapy. The semistructured interview focused on exploring psychodynamic components of the therapeutic process—how well it is maintained, altered, lost, or added due to various changes we faced during the unprepared transition. This study points out the cocreated therapeutic setting as one of the most distinguishing differences in teletherapy. As half of our physical therapeutic environment is now managed by our patients, participants in the study reported observing a diverse curation of what our patients choose to show us beyond the walls of our therapy room. This “patient-curated therapeutic setting” or “patient-curated analytic space” can have enormous implications as an extended transference expression where the patient may convey their internal world in a more vivid way. Finally, this study highlights the importance of therapists’ intuition in allowing for certain flexibility in the frame and the openness and curiosity required to actively make use of the novel information gained in teletherapy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>ADHD and the schizoid experience: Attention, withdrawal, and symbolic collapse in psychoanalytic perspective.
Adult presentations of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increasingly arrive in psychotherapy with an established diagnosis, yet some attentional disturbances encountered in psychodynamic work appear more closely linked to schizoid dynamics and difficulties in sustaining symbolization. Drawing on a composite clinical vignette, this article explores how inattention, fragmentation, and episodic collapse of attention and reflective capacity may, in certain adults with ADHD, serve to regulate relational proximity defensively rather than reflecting difficulties that are exclusively neurocognitive. Integrating Bion’s account of alpha function, the transformation of raw emotional experience into thinkable form, with Fairbairn’s, Guntrip’s, and McWilliams’s descriptions of schizoid organization and withdrawal, I suggest that in certain cases attentional disturbance reflects a relational and symbolic organization of mind that can be obscured beneath the ADHD label. These questions have gained salience within a hypermodern diagnostic culture in which autism and autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder have become common self-descriptions in many online and clinical contexts; differentiating these presentations from schizoid phenomenology requires attention to transference and the symbolic field. Despite a rich object relations literature, schizoid organization remains underrecognized as a differential consideration in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–shaped clinical contexts. By situating attentional collapse within a relational, symbolic, and hypermodern cultural frame, this article offers an expanded understanding of adult ADHD and autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder presentations and highlights the value of psychoanalytic treatment in restoring the conditions under which attention can begin to think. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>The risk of being known: Power, asymmetry, and K.
This article revisits Wilfred Bion’s concept of K (the emotional link of knowing) to explore a dimension that remains undertheorized in the literature: the question of power. While Bion and his interpreters have emphasized K as a developmental drive toward emotional truth, sustained by the therapist’s capacity for containment and reverie, this article considers whether power is not merely incidental to knowing in the analytic relationship but constitutive of it. Drawing on clinical work with complex trauma, the article explores how the asymmetry between therapist and patient, in which the therapist is structurally positioned as a necessary condition for the patient’s capacity to think their most disturbing thoughts, creates a power differential that structures the relational field. This asymmetry manifests most clearly in what might be called the risk of being known: the patient’s vulnerability in needing another mind to think their most disturbing thoughts. Building on the well-established understanding of defenses as having communicative and relational dimensions, the article considers whether defensive strategies might also be understood as assessments of power—ways of testing the therapist’s capacity to hold structural authority without wielding it destructively. More radically, it asks whether such strategies might constitute a form of primitive K: the patient’s way of knowing the therapist through developmentally early means that carry relational intelligence not yet available to symbolic thought. This reframing has implications for clinical practice, relational theory, and work with populations who have experienced systemic oppression or trauma. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>“Taking on the position of someone who does not know”: A qualitative study of early dynamics in psychodynamic supervisor–supervisee relationships.
Supervision is central to psychotherapist training, particularly within the psychodynamic paradigm, where professional development unfolds through relationship. This qualitative study explores how supervisors and supervisees experience the supervisory relationship during the initial phase of psychodynamic psychotherapy supervision (within the first 10 sessions). Six supervisor–supervisee dyads from Lithuania participated in semistructured interviews, with data analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Supervisees emphasized the need for emotional safety, pedagogical competence, and space to reflect on difficult emotions. They valued warmth, flexibility, and the ability to be vulnerable without judgment. Supervisors highlighted the importance of fostering openness, managing defensiveness, and adapting to each supervisee’s pace. They also reflected on their own task of building mutual understanding and providing the necessary conditions for supervisees early in the process. The findings underscore the emotional and interpersonal complexity of early supervision, shaped by relational dynamics and individual traits. Implications are offered for cultivating supportive and growth-oriented supervisory relationships in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic training contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Criterion validity of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale with the Thematic Apperception Test: A meta-analytic review.
This is the first meta-analytic review of the criterion validity of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS) as applied to Thematic Apperception Test narratives, evaluating whether SCORS ratings significantly correlate with external indices of psychological and behavioral functioning. The primary hypothesis of the present study was that the overall criterion validity of the SCORS with Thematic Apperception Test narratives would yield a small to medium overall weighted effect size, with specific effects aligned with individual study hypotheses. In addition, we developed several secondary hypotheses. We hypothesized that higher SCORS ratings—indicative of more adaptive object relational functioning—would be significantly associated with a range of specific external criterion variables, including (a) membership in nonclinical versus clinical populations; (b) adaptive differences among diagnostic, clinical, and developmental groups; (c) positive psychotherapy process and outcome indicators; (d) lower levels of overall symptom severity or psychopathology; (e) higher ratings of intrapsychic functioning; (f) higher ratings of interpersonal functioning; and (g) greater performance on measures of cognitive functioning. A random effects meta-analysis was conducted on 37 articles representing 32 independent samples (N = 2,399). The primary hypothesis was supported as SCORS ratings demonstrated significant criterion validity, yielding an overall weighted effect size of r = .227 (p < .001). Heterogeneity testing showed no significant between-study variability, Q(31) = 33.210, p = .360, I² = 7%, suggesting consistency of validity effects across samples. In addition, when effect sizes were classified separately based on their different sources of criterion variables, each of these subgroup meta-analyses yielded significant results (p < .02) consistent with secondary hypotheses. Publication bias analyses were conducted, and two of these suggested some potential risk of bias. However, analyses conducted to correct for any potential risk of bias yielded an overall weighted effect size that remained statistically significant. Interrater reliability of SCORS coding in the original studies included in this meta-analysis was excellent, with an average intraclass correlation coefficient of .847 across 1,676 ratings. Analysis of Thematic Apperception Test card usage indicated that Cards 1, 2, 3BM, 4, and 13MF were most frequently administered (> 70%), supporting their use as a core set for standardized clinical assessment and research protocols. Findings provide robust evidence supporting the SCORS as a psychometrically sound measure of relational and affective functioning, with practical implications for clinical diagnosis, treatment planning, and tracking therapeutic change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Symbolic resistance and integration: The metaphor of eyeglasses in adolescent psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
This brief report explores the symbolic meaning of adolescents’ refusal to wear prescribed glasses in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It has been demonstrated that conventional glasses are imbued with intricate symbolic connotations pertaining to visibility, vulnerability, and subjective positioning in relation to the gaze of others. As demonstrated by clinical examples, adolescents initially exhibit reluctance to wear glasses, attributable to unconscious anxieties concerning exposure and vulnerability. Through psychoanalytic interpretation, these resistances are reconceptualized as symbolic defense mechanisms reflecting deeper psychoanalytic conflicts such as narcissistic injury, social objectification, and autonomy. The therapeutic progress evident in the eventual acceptance of glasses symbolizes significant changes toward symbolic integration, self-efficacy, and relational maturity. The report emphasizes the importance of attentiveness to subtle behavioural changes in psychotherapy and how apparently ordinary objects can provide insight into underlying psychodynamic processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Review of Adolescent Casebook.
Reviews the book, Adolescent Casebook edited by Jack Novick and Kerry Kelly Novick (2022). Adolescent Casebook is a comprehensive contribution to the psychoanalytic literature on adolescence. This 2022 volume gathers 58 contributors from around the world and presents 19 psychoanalytic processes spanning the period from prepuberty to emerging adulthood. For analysts, supervisors, and students, Adolescent Casebook offers both a collection of clinical practice and a vision for psychoanalysis as a developmental, flexible, and relational process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Review of Winnicott’s letter to Bion: Playing, dreaming and beyond.
Reviews the book, Winnicott's Letter to Bion: Playing, Dreaming and Beyond edited by Steven H. Cooper and Christopher G. Lovett (2025). Between 1951 and 1967, Donald Winnicott wrote five letters to Wilfred Bion, attempting to engage his colleague in a discussion about their many overlapping interests. Yet there is no record of Bion responding to nearly any of them. This sad situation cannot help but tug at the hearts and minds of contemporary analysts. Why the unrequited bromance? What would the conversation have looked like had it occurred? Editors Steven Cooper and Christopher Lovett have prompted an international group of Winnicott and Bion scholars to offer their “personal and creative readings of that undeveloped conversation.” The current author states that this book is a critical volume in the library of any analyst or scholar who considers both Winnicott and Bion significant influences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>Review of Psychoanalysis and ethics: The necessity of perspective.
Reviews the book, Psychoanalysis and Ethics: The Necessity of Perspective by David M. Black (see record 2025-04174-000). In this review, David Black confronts the most far-reaching moral questions of contemporary life, extending psychoanalytic responsibility beyond the clinical dyad to encompass environmental crisis, interspecies relations, and humanity’s obligations to the planet. The review argues that the book is best understood not as a loose collection of essays but as a single, coherent argument organized along critical and constructive axes. Black’s central critical claim is that classical Freudian psychoanalysis, grounded in a scientific Weltanschauung, lacks the conceptual resources to account for the motivational reality of ethical values. In response, he advances a revised psychoanalytic framework derived from object relations theory, emphasizing the phenomenological reality of internal objects and their allegorical, affective embodiment of moral values. The review traces how Black develops this “ethical seriousness” through engagements with Buddhism, Dante’s Commedia, and the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. While commending the clarity and ambition of Black’s attempt to formulate a psychoanalytic psychology of morals without recourse to the superego, the review raises sustained concerns about his consistent psychologization of religion and his dismissal of faith. These limitations, it argues, weaken his readings of Dante and Levinas, even as the book succeeds as a lucid and provocative contribution to contemporary moral psychology within psychoanalysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved)
Publication date: Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Access the article >>