BACKGROUND Cognitive-behavioural therapy is efficacious in the treatment of major depressive disorder but response rates are still far from satisfactory. AIMS To better understand brain responses to individualised emotional stimuli and their association with outcome, to enhance treatment. METHOD Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected prior to individual psychotherapy. Dif...

BACKGROUND Interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive-behavioural therapy are widely accepted as effective treatments for major depression. There is little evidence on how personality disorder or personality traits affect treatment response. AIMS To determine whether personality disorder or traits have an adverse impact on treatment response to interpersonal psychotherapy or cognitive-behaviou...

Depression is a complex condition, and its classical biological/psychosocial distinction is fading. Current guidelines are increasingly advocating psychotherapy as a treatment option. Psychodynamic psychotherapy models encompass a heterogeneous group of interventions derived from early psychoanalytic conceptualizations. Growing literature is raising awareness in the scientific community about t...

In an experimental analog of group psychotherapy situations, the effects of two dosages of a tranquillizing agent (prazepam) are compared with those of placebo treatment. Pulse frequency and psychic strain on 24 healthy young volunteers was measured in different social interactions. Variations of social situations induced great changes both in physiological and in psychological measures. The dr...

The purpose of this paper is to describe and illuminate the phenomenon of scapegoating in group psychotherapy. Specifically, the role of projective identification - on both individual and group-wide bases - in the evolution of the deviant is delineated. Individual, interpersonal, and whole-group interventions are presented along with the technique of functional subgrouping, a relatively new and...

There has been an increased interest in the study of language processes in psychotherapy. More recently, research and theoretical formulations of the therapeutic process suggested that we must move from the microscopic study of verbal modes to a macroscopic approach in which these modes are organized into narratives. Narratives are conceived, in this perspective, as the basic instruments for me...