Biomedical subjects

R M Bergner

Publications and source records attributed to R M Bergner.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2000

Love and barriers to love. An analysis for psychotherapists and others.

It is vitally important that psychotherapists bring a strong understanding of the nature of love to their work with the many clients who are struggling, in one way or another, with love relationships. With this in mind, the present paper is designed to accomplish two purposes. The first of these is to provide an adequate answer to an old and perplexing question: "What is romantic love?," and to do so in a way that illuminates why this one relationship possesses the extraordinary importance and centrality in human existence that it so clearly does. The second is to identify and discuss the most common barriers to persons being able to love that are encountered in clinical practice.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Status enhancement: a further path to therapeutic change.

Historically, psychotherapists have targeted change efforts primarily on clients' behaviors, beliefs, unconscious conflicts, and patterns of interaction with significant others. The present article explores a further, and very powerful, path to change: that of bringing about changes in the client's status.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Therapeutic approaches to problems of meaninglessness.

Paradigmatically, meaningful action, and by extension meaningful living, inhere in immersed participation in activities from which one derives substantial instrumental, intrinsic, and/or spiritual value. The greater the departure from this paradigm (the existentialist's "absurd" being the extreme case), the more meaningless will one's existence seem. Employing this paradigm case as a point of departure, the job of the psychotherapist becomes that of (a) diagnosing obstacles to clients securing such value in their behavior, and (b) assisting them in the removal or diminution of these obstacles. The empirically most common of these obstacles, as well as some therapeutic approaches to addressing them, have been discussed in this article.

Affective Symptoms↗

PubMed1998

Characteristics of optimal clinical case formulations. The linchpin concept.

Being able to discern the presence of a central organizing linchpin in a given clinical case represents a highly advantageous state of affairs. One can, by virtue of this, proceed in a very efficient and economical, as opposed to piecemeal, fashion. Further, one can achieve this economy and efficiency without paying the price of superficiality, since one is getting to what might be termed "the heart of the matter" in the client's case. Finally, one has in a linchpin formulation a central blueprint that provides (a) a clear, constant goal for therapist and client; (b) a clarification for clients of both their power and of where and how they would best target their efforts; and (c) a vast heuristic suggestiveness as to how one might proceed therapeutically to bring about important change.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1994

Finkelhor's Risk Factor Checklist: a cross-validation study.

Finkelhor's (1979) Risk Factor Checklist factors were reexamined as predictors of childhood sexual abuse. Special procedures were employed, designed to facilitate a high degree of honest and diligent task implementation by the female college students who served as subjects, and to provide strong ethical safeguards for them. Results indicated (a) that subjects reported a relatively high incidence, 24.3%, of childhood sexual abuse; and (b) that the eight factors comprising the Risk Factor Checklist, employed individually and collectively, did not strongly and significantly predict sexual victimization. Only one factor, low family income, proved predictive, while three others showed trends in the predicted direction. Results sound a cautionary note regarding our ability to actuarially predict childhood sexual victimization.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1988

Money's "lovemap" account of the paraphilias: a critique and reformulation.

In this paper, (a) Money's recent "Lovemap" account of the intelligibility of paraphilic sexual rituals is outlined; (b) his contention that such acts may be viewed as "triumphs" of a certain sort is criticized as incomplete; and (c) an alternate formulation of paraphilic acts as insistent, preemptively motivated, but ultimately unsuccessful attempts at recovery from sexual degradation is proffered.

Arousal↗

PubMed1981

The use of objectively scorable House-Tree-Person indicators to establish child abuse.

Conducted a study to determine whether the House-Tree-Person Test might be used as a means to identify physically abused children. Protocols of 32 abused children, 32 nonabused but disturbed children, and 45 apparently very well-adjusted children were examined for the presence of 15 objectively scorable items that emerged as good potential discriminators from a pilot study of 60 children. Results of several statistical analyses indicated (a) that items taken individually discriminate strongly between abused and well-adjusted children, but not between abused and nonabused but disturbed children; and (b) that items used collectively, specifically a 6-item test that comprised the 6 most discriminating individual items, discriminate reasonably well between abused children and both of the other two groups. Based on these results, this 6-item test is proposed for use by child care professionals in attempting to identify abused children.

Child↗

PubMed1977

The marital system of the hysterical individual.

The purpose of the present article is to supplement the considerable body of clinical literature that focuses on hysterical behavior from an individual perspective. Based on findings from a total sample of 16 couples, this paper accomplishes this task in a threefold manner. First, the characteristic type of individual who selects and is selected by the hysterical individual as a life partner is described. Second, the type of relationship these two individuals typically develop, which promotes and reinforces severely maladaptive behavior on the part of both is delineated. Third, a number of specific recommendations regarding psychotherapy for this type of relationship are proffered.

Attitude↗