Governor Spitzer is not a hypocrite although his contradictory behavior is surely hypocritical. Rather he is probably representative of a large group of psychological disorders characterized by an internal struggle often illustrated by that of a fight between virtue and sin. We call these cases personality disorders exhibiting a vertical split in which an otherwise honorable individual periodically engages in behavior which is abhorrent to them. These behaviors range from lying to thievery, from excessive shopping to substance abuse. All of these individuals are suffering from what in psychoanalysis is termed a narcissistic disorder and most of these individuals are treatable by psychoanalysis or psychoanalytically-informed psychotherapy. Continue reading Arnold Goldberg on Eliot Spitzer
Category: Controversial
Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration
Last week a new article analyzing ALL the data from ALL the short term clinical trials submitted to the FDA for the licensing of fluoxetine, venlafaxine, nefazodone, and paroxetine was published in PLOS Medicine, [Public Library of Science, a peer reviewed open-access journal.]
Click Here to Read: “Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration” Irving Kirsch, Brett J. Deacon, Tania B. Huedo-Medina, Alan Scoboria, Thomas J. Moore, Blair T. Johnson, February 26, 2008.
The Editors’ Summary includes the following:
“WHAT DO THESE FINDINGS MEAN?
These findings suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression, but show significant effects only in the most severely depressed patients. The findings also show that the effect for these patients seems to be due to decreased responsiveness to placebo, rather than increased responsiveness to medication. Given these results, the researchers conclude that there is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most the severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective. In addition, the finding that extremely depressed patients are less responsive to placebo than less severely depressed patients but have similar responses to antidepressants is a potentially important insight into how patients with depression respond to antidepressants and placebos that should be investigated further.”
So was the marketing of these drugs not justified based on the submitted data, or are the authors biased as some advocates of SSRIs as first line treatment for depression claim?
Some interesting comments on the article are at:http://tinyurl.com/3dpx6o
Paul Mosher
Anti-depressants’ ‘little effect,’ Article from the Website BBC News
Group Helplessness and Rage by Ernest S. Wolf, MD.
Click Here to Read: Group Helplessness and Rage by Ernest S. Wolf, MD. on the website Barbara’s Tchatzkas: Spirituality, Judaism, Eretz Yisroel, Psychology, Disability
Issues, Progressive Politics, Women’s Issues, Satire & Other Pieces of Me, Shalom. Posted on Barbara’s site on Monday, February 11, 2008.
Master of the Orgasm: A Fresh Look at the Laughingstock of Psychoanalysis By Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Little Hans: A Centennial Review and Reconsideration by Harold Blum
Click Here to Read: Little Hans: A Centennial Review and Reconsideration by Harold Blum
This article has been previously published – Little Hans: A Centennial Review and Reconsideration by Harold Blum (2007, Summer) Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 55, No. 3, 749-765.
Abstract of this paper:
Freud’s “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy” (1909) has stimulated interminable “reanalysis.” The case of Little Hans, an unprecedented experimental child analytic treatment, is reexamined in the light of newer theory and newly derestricted documents. The understanding of the complex overdetermination of Hans’s phobia was not possible in the heroic age of psychoanalysis. Current analytic thought, as well as distance de-idealization vis-à-vis the pioneering past, has potentiated a reformation of the case. The severe disturbance of his mother had an adverse impact on Little Hans and his family. Her abuse of Hans’s infant sister has been overlooked by generations of analysts. Trauma, child abuse, parental strife, and the preoedipal mother-child relationship emerge as important issues that intensified Hans’s pathogenic oedipal conflicts and trauma. With limited, yet remarkable help from his father and Freud, Little Hans nevertheless had the ego strength and resilience to resolve his phobia, resume progressive development, and forge a successful creative career.
