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American Journal of Psychotherapy

ISSN 0002-9564

15 papers in the library · 492 citations · publishing 1976-2025

Papers

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The Role of Touch in Psychedelic Therapy: Perspectives From a Survey of Practitioners in Research Settings.

American Journal of Psychotherapy May 6, 2025 David A Bender, Sandeep M. Nayak, Joshua S. Siegel et al. 7 citations

Psychedelic therapies are promising new treatment options in psychiatry. Including the use of physical touch as part of treatment is an area of debate. This study aimed to characterize the viewpoints of practitioners on the use of touch in psychedelic therapy. An anonymous survey was distributed via e-mail to the contacts listed on ClinicalTrials.gov for trials of psilocybin and lysergic acid...

Systematized Review of Psychotherapeutic Components of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy

American Journal of Psychotherapy July 23, 2021 David Horton, Blaise Morrison, Judy A. Schmidt 92 citations

This systematized review found important commonalities among clinical trials of PAP published within the past 25 years and revealed key differences among studies in psychotherapy's incorporation into PAP. Additional research is needed to identify the unique effect of psychotherapy in PAP.

Therapeutic utilization of spontaneous out-of-body experiences in hypnotherapy.

American Journal of Psychotherapy 2004 Joseph Meyerson, Marc Gelkopf

An out-of-body experience (OBE) is a unique dissociative event in which the person feels separated from his/her body. Studies and anecdotal reports have observed that this experience tends to appear spontaneously in stressful and hypnogogic situations. It often contributes to the person's later having a new perspective of himself and his conception of the world, and may influence his...

Zazen and psychotherapeutic presence.

American Journal of Psychotherapy 2000 R F Thomson

Zen meditation, or zazen, has attracted the interest of many psychotherapists. The teachings and practices of the Soto Zen tradition are understood as encouraging important areas of both psychological and spiritual development. Zen, like the relational psychoanalytic theories, encourages its practitioners to become aware of the fundamentally distorted aspects of an overly individualistic view...

The "adualistic" representation of trauma: on malignant internalization.

American Journal of Psychotherapy 1999 R Meares

This paper suggests that traumatic memories are represented in a way that is qualitatively different from nontraumatic memories. The argument depends upon a concept of self, derived from Hughlings Jackson and William James, which is double, involving not only mental life but reflection upon it. Trauma is seen as causing an uncoupling, or dedoubling, of consciousness. The traumatic diminishment...

The Characterological Basis of Multiple Personality

American Journal of Psychotherapy April 1, 1996 Ira Brenner 19 citations

This review has focused on the characterological features of dissociative identity disorder (DID), extending the "state versus trait" debate to the realm of the dissociative disorders. A number of different theories are presented describing DID as a variant of, on a continuum with, or being comorbid with the narcissistic and the borderline personality disorders. It is then hypothesized that DID...

Posttraumatic Re-experiencing in Older People: Working through or Covering up?

American Journal of Psychotherapy April 1, 1996 J. N. Schreuder 15 citations

Posttraumatic re-experiencing is a key symptom of earlier psychotraumatic experiences. It is important to establish whether we are dealing with nightmares or re-enactments. Posttraumatic nightmares are an expression of intrapsychic concerns and conflicts and, in and of themselves, need not impede exploratory psychotherapy. The nightmare entails both regression to the perceptual level of a small...

Clinical Use of Dreams with Latency-age Children

American Journal of Psychotherapy October 1, 1991 Owen Lewis, J O'Brien 7 citations

Although various authors have discussed the technical modification required for dream interpretation with children, the basic conceptualization of the psychotherapeutic use of the dream with children has remained virtually identical to that with adult analysands. Examining various sources including formal studies on the nature of children's dreams, clinical case reports and series, and...

The Use of Meditation in Psychotherapy: A Review of the Literature

American Journal of Psychotherapy July 1, 1991 Greg Bogart 67 citations

This article has explored research to date concerning the efficacy of introducing meditation into the therapeutic setting. I have presented the views of proponents and critics of the relaxation model of meditation and of theories describing the cognitive changes brought about by meditation--for example, Deikman's theory of the deautomatization of consciousness and Delmonte's view that...

Putting Eastern philosophies into Western psychotherapies.

American Journal of Psychotherapy July 1, 1991 J D Atwood, L Maltin 26 citations

This paper examined the multidisciplinary trends in modern society that have given rise to the notion of the interconnectedness of the universe. This idea constitutes a radical departure from the spirit of basic research in physics, which had always been bent on finding the fundamental constituents of nature. The new physics abandons not only the idea of fundamental building blocks of matter,...

Can Drugs Be Used to Enhance the Psychotherapeutic Process?

American Journal of Psychotherapy July 1, 1986 Lester Grinspoon, James B. Bakalar 189 citations

Many preindustrial cultures traditionally use certain psychedelic plants to enhance a procedure that resembles psychotherapy--an idea that was also tested in Western psychiatry in the 1950s and 1960s. LSD and related drugs were used to facilitate the production of memories, fantasies and insights and to enhance the therapeutic alliance. The results were inconclusive, and research was largely...

The reality and the image of God in psychotherapy.

American Journal of Psychotherapy 1985 M H Spero

I have suggested that the plea for increased respect for the religious patient's perspectives demands a willingness on the psychotherapist's part to acknowledge the unique reality of the patient's relationships with religious objects, a reality which extends beyond the assumptions and predicates of standard interpersonal models of human behavior. At the same time, the psychotherapist can...

Religious delusions among Jews.

American Journal of Psychotherapy 1980 R A Clark

Though most previous publications described religious delusions only among Christians, a review of cases at Friends Hospital revealed that they are equally common among Jews. Five cases are given, four illustrating psychotic reactions to stress, one demonstrating that a religious experience does not necessarily result in psychosis. Content may come from either the Old or New Testaments. The...

The running meditation response: an adjunct to psychotherapy.

American Journal of Psychotherapy October 1, 1978 E G Solomon, A K Bumpus

The physical technique of slow, long distance running and the mental centering devices of T. M. are combined, using hypnosis in some cases, to enhance a "peak experience," or altered state of consciousness. Indications and contraindications to this technique are described for various psychiatric, psychosomatic and somatic syndromes, and its use as an adjunct to formal individual and group...

Meditation and consciousness: an Asian approach to mental health.

American Journal of Psychotherapy 1976 D Goleman 70 citations

According to Abhidhamma, a classical Asian phenomenology of consciousness, through meditation a set of "healthy" mental properties reciprocally inhibits an "unhealthy" set. In light of Abhidhamma and empirical findings, applications of meditation are suggested for inducing an optimal mode of responsiveness to environmental demands, and as a complementary adjunct to psychotherapy.