According to the biopsychosocial model, developed by the late Dr. George Engel, how physicians approach patients and the problems they present is very much ...

Tigard suggests that the medical community would benefit from continuing to promote notions of individual responsibility and blame in healthcare settings. In particular, he contends that blame will promote systematic improvement, both on the individual and institutional levels, by increasing the likelihood that the blameworthy party will ‘own up’ to his or her mistake and apologise. While we agree that communicating regret and offering a genuine apology are critical steps to take when addressing patient harm, the idea that medical professionals (...) should continue to ‘take the blame’ for medical errors flies in the face of existing science and threatens to do more harm than good. We contrast Dr Tigard’s approach with the current literature on blame to promote an alternative strategy that may help to create lasting change in the face of unfortunate error. (shrink)

This book is a psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of how the digital is transforming our perception of the world and our understanding of ourselves. Drawing on examples from everyday life, myth, and popular culture, this book argues that virtual reality is only the latest instantiation of the phenomenon of the virtual, which is intrinsic to human being. It illuminates what is at stake in our understanding of the relationship between the virtual and the real, showing how our present technologies both (...) enhance and diminish our psychological lives. The authors claim that technology is a pharmakon --at the same time both a remedy and a poison-- and in their writing exemplify a method that overcomes the polarization that compels us to regard it either as a liberating force or a dangerous threat in human life. The digital revolution challenges us to reckon with the implications of what is being called our posthuman condition, leaving behind our modern conception of the world as constituted by atemporal essences and reconceiving it instead as one of processes and change. The book's postscript considers the sudden plunge into the virtual effected by the 2020 global pandemic. Accessible and wide-reaching, this book will appeal not only to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers, but anyone interested in the ways virtuality and the digital are transforming our contemporary lives. (shrink)

Adolescence is recognised as a turbulent period of human development. Along with the physical changes of puberty, adolescents undergo significant transformations in the way they think, act, feel and perceive the world. The disruption that is manifest in their behaviour is upsetting and often incomprehensible to the adults surrounding them. In _The Adolescent Psyche_ Richard Frankel shows how this unique stage of human development expresses through its traumas and fantasies the adolescent's urge towards self-realization. The impact of contemporary culture on (...) the lives of young people has resulted in an increasing number of adolescents being referred for psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment. Successful outcomes are often difficult to achieve in clinical work with clients of this age-group. The advice and guidelines which Frankel provides will be welcomed by psychotherapists, parents, educators and anyone working with adolescents. (shrink)