What are the primary features or themes that have come to increasingly define the effective practice of psychoanalytic supervision? In this article, I give attention to that question -identifying and reflecting upon a set of 10 "emerged" or "emerging" guideposts that seem to capture key facets or factors of the supervision scene now. Some of the areas that are reviewed include: (a) having fire, passion, and spirit for doing psychoanalytic supervision; (b) the learning alliance, real relationship, and supervision agreement; (c) analytic and supervisory reflectivity; (d) acute apprehension of the supervisory field (i.e., understanding and productively utilizing analytic and supervision transference, countertransference, and parallel process phenomena); (e) supervision intervention; and (f) individual and developmental diversity. Each of those areas is examined for its supervisory significance, and effort is made to develop a contemporary portrait of some of the essentials of effective psychoanalytic supervision practice. That resulting portrait is then placed within the context of the current competency movement, and the need to more clearly articulate a competency-based approach for psychoanalytic supervision is considered. Now over a century old, psychoanalytic supervision has proven to be a vibrant, vital, and vitalizing component of psychoanalytic education-a cornerstone in the "making" of psychoanalytic practitioners. In what follows, I hope to communicate and celebrate some of why that is so and reflect on how we might contribute to the further enrichment of that generative tradition.

Research and clinical observation suggest that men tend to avail themselves of therapeutic services far less so than women and engage in treatment research less so as well. How many men have actually been involved in short-term and long-term psychodynamic treatment research? To consider that question, I (a) obtained and examined 86 studies (1/1960–6/2008, drawn from six separate reviews/meta-analyses) of psychodynamic treatment conducted over the last decade and (b) reviewed each investigation to determine the number of male as opposed to female participants involved. Approximately one-third of the 86 studies were long-term in nature (involving a minimum of 50 sessions). The results were as follows: (a) of the 7,715 research participants, 2,688 were male; (b) 11% of the studies included no males, 9% failed to clearly specify the number of males that were involved, and 23% had a total of six males or less in either the entire sample or in the dynamic treatment group specifically; and (c) 40% of the male participants came from four data sets (five studies and one study correction), each of which focused on cocaine or opium addicts. Those data suggest that: (a) much like psychotherapy research in general, fewer men (40%) compared to women (60%) tend to participate in psychodynamic treatment research; (b) our most robust results about men appear to be about addicted men; and (c) otherwise, results about men collectively appear to be far from robust, and any interpretation seemingly should be guided by that reality.

No abstract

The Psychological wavelengths intermingled in pursuance of roots of various characteristics as reflected through the novel Blindness are different conceptual explorations. Identity is an intricate term in the present scenario. For him, the novel is a medium where socio-cultural and political issues are addressed and his voice acts as a didactic language that represents the colonial and postcolonial subjects. Moreover, he illustrates the political ideology in a different way. The representation of the other by a meta-narrative voice is the hallmark of Jose Saramago's novels. In his novels, he acts as an all-knowing narrator or implied author who tries to transform the society and the Portuguese culture in general. The representation of the other in the novel Blindness is a kind of historical discourse which is articulated as artificial, a constructed category, a power-based and discriminatory construction. Of course, it is communicated through conventional, discursive and narrative strategies. Hence, we find a relation between history and story in these narratives. As so many disaster narratives start, Blindness also begins with a disaster-traffic jam. It anticipates a search for identity. In the novel, Saramago invites our attention to think of a kind of chaos and horror that happens in Blindness. In the novel Blindness, the identities clash with one another owing to the common identity of blindness having a big and tremendous impact in it one way or the other. In short, the significance of blindness becomes dominant only when there is eyesight and the existence of the nonblind. In that way, the blind have their own identity and culture and Saramago tries to add more coloring to that identity in a philosophical and eschatological manner. The paper intends to explain that idea.

No abstract