This issue of PSC features a bold theoretical exploration of the concept of freedom as it applies to the clinical space, a cultural journey into the meaning of the “evil eye,” three papers exploring the use of non-traditional methodologies in self psychological treatment, a therapist’s remarkable way of discovering her own hidden selves through writing, a creative use of self psychological therapy to calm the demons in a schizophrenic patient, a beautiful clinical exploration of the depressiveness that can beset women who are childless, and a literary evocation of the course of grief of a mother who has suffered the death of her daughter. It is an issue worth reading cover to cover as it will open new vistas for understanding the human psyche and how to go about dealing with its multifold distortions and constrictions. Our authors are not only excellent clinicians but fine writers, and we take pride in the literary excellence that characterizes this Issue.
Bill Coburn’s article and Max Sucharov’s discussion explore the philosophical conundrums of the important concept of freedom which Coburn inventively ties to both complexity theory and self-ownership. Amanda Kottler’s highly engaging article reveals how she discovered through writing fiction a crucial hidden self that was desperately trying to speak to her. Caroline de Pottel offers us a clinical case of a woman who is depressed because she has disobeyed a cultural norm that women must be mothers and discovers in treating her that she herself has unexplored feelings about being childless. Karen Stewart presents a ground-breaking case in which she is able to help a schizophrenic patient deal with demons that have terrorized her soul since an impossibly traumatic childhood. The journal then gathers three papers by Bradley Jones, Heather Ferguson, and Kristin Long that were presented at 2023 Chicago conference panel on “Expanding the Edges of Self Psychology: Harm Reduction, Creative Arts, and Guided Imagery.” These papers—all written in engaging styles—present techniques from other forms of therapy as possibilities for expanding self psychological treatment. The section on Research Articles concludes with Türkarslan’s and Kozak’s paper, which attempts to understand the various meanings of the evil eye for Middle Eastern cultures and in therapeutic cases. In the Comment by Kerry Malawista, we are offered a poignantly written narrative of a mother’s journey to deal with the untimely and tragic death of her daughter. The issue closes with two book reviews, rich in clinical insights, by Sandra Buechler of Lauren Levine’s Risking Intimacy and Creative Transformation in Psychoanalysis, and by Denise Davis of Charles Strozier’s, et. al.’s New World of Self: Heinz Kohut’s Transformation of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. We think that this book should be on every self psychologist’s shelf as it gives such a fine interweaving of biography, clinical examples, and Kohut’s theory.
Enjoy!