Personal therapy as an important aspect of psychologists and psychotherapists' professional training

ntroduction. Personal therapy is an emotionally and professionally important experience that should be central to the training and development ofhealth professionals -psychologists and psychotherapists.Aim. Based on the analysis of latest research, to identify the main trends in giving personal therapy to counselors and psychologists as a mandatory part of their professional training.Results. Personal therapy, according to foreign research, is at the epicenter of psychologists' educational space. In most European countries and the United States, personal therapy is a prerequisite to obtaining a degree in counseling. In those countries, personaltherapy is received by every three out of four psychology students, while in Ukraine only one out of four students goes into therapy. Specialists value their personal experience of therapy more than their didactic training. The inclusion of personal therapy in the educational process helps to achieve students' personal and professional goals, as well as to increase their levels of self-awareness and professional identification through the internalization of their professional qualities.Conclusions. The analysis of latest relevant research has found a strong need for psychology/psychotherapy students' personal therapy as an effective method of forming their professional position and necessary professional qualities.

The Virtuous Servant Owner—A Paradigm Whose Time has Come (Again)

Social Robots are coming. They are being designed to enter our lives and help in everything from childrearing to elderly care, from household chores to personal therapy, and the list goes on. There is great promise that these machines will further the progress that their predecessors achieved, enhancing our lives and alleviating us of the many tasks with which we would rather not be occupied. But there is a dilemma. On the one hand, these machines are just that, machines. Accordingly, some thinkers propose that we maintain this perspective and relate to Social Robots as “tools”. Yet, in treating them as such, it is argued, we deny our own natural empathy, ultimately inculcating vicious as opposed to virtuous dispositions. Many thinkers thus apply Kant’s approach to animals—“he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men”—contending that we must not maltreat robots lest we maltreat humans. On the other hand, because we innately anthropomorphize entities that behave with autonomy and mobility (let alone entities that exhibit beliefs, desires and intentions), we become emotionally entangled with them. Some thinkers actually encourage such relationships. But there are problems here also. For starters, many maintain that it is imprudent to have “empty,” unidirectional relationships for we will then fail to appreciate authentic reciprocal relationships. Furthermore, such relationships can lead to our being manipulated, to our shunning of real human interactions as “messy,” to our incorrectly allocating resources away from humans, and more. In this article, I review the various positions on this issue and propose an approach that I believe sits in the middle ground between the one extreme of treating Social Robots as mere machines versus the other extreme of accepting Social Robots as having human-like status. I call the approach “The Virtuous Servant Owner” and base it on the virtue ethics of the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides.

Music Therapists as Clients: Therapy-Seeking and Utilization of Personal Therapy by Music Therapists

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors related to personal therapy for board-certified music therapists (MT-BCs), specifically regarding the rate of past and present therapy attendance, type of therapy utilized, reason(s) music therapists seek therapy, and the role of gender identity or theoretical orientation on rates of therapy utilization. Music therapists were considered as both professional musicians and allied health professionals, potentially exposing them to both areas of occupational risk relating to psychological stress or illness. A survey was created and sent out to all MT-BCs who opted to receive research inquiries (8,493), with a return of 945 usable responses. The majority of participants indicated that they have attended therapy or counseling at some point in time during their career. The most commonly utilized form of therapy was talk therapy or verbal counseling. Common reasons for therapy attendance were to seek personal insight, address a mental health concern, address feelings of stress from work, and address a mental illness. There was no apparent difference in therapy-seeking dependent on gender identity, but participants with theoretical orientations that emphasize the importance of personal insight may have higher rates of therapy utilization. Implications from the findings of the study and recommendations for future research were discussed.

Existential Approaches and Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Challenges and Potential

Existential concerns such as death, responsibility, meaninglessness, and isolation not only are the hallmark of existential psychotherapy but also are frequently encountered by CBT therapists—nevertheless, due to epistemological and ideological differences, existential and CBT approaches to psychotherapy had little overlap historically. During recent years, existential issues are increasingly discussed in empirical clinical psychology, e.g., the potential role of the fear of death for a variety of mental disorders by Iverach et al. (Clinical Psychology Review, 34(7), 580–593, 2014), and there is increasing experimental evidence for a causal rather than correlational role of death anxiety discussed by Menzies and Dar-Nimrod (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(4), 367–377, 2017). Further, existential concerns are common themes in CBT discussed by Grober et al. (Psychotherapeut, 61(3), 229–236, 2016) and may play an important role in the training of CBT therapists discussed by Worrell et al. (Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology Reflections, 3(1), 9–16, 2018) as well as in personal therapy and supervision.

Supramolecular cancer nanotheranostics

Supramolecular cancer nanotheranostics have shown promising potentials in early-stage diagnosis and personal therapy. Herein, we summarize the progress of supramolecular cancer nanotheranostics and provide guidance for designing new targeted supramolecular theranostic agents.

What you see is not what you get: multiple states and dialogues in borderline presentations

The recently revised NICE guidelines on treatment and management of borderline personality disorder (BPD) (NICE, 2018) presents new evidence on psychological therapies being effective treatments for patients diagnosed with BPD. This article will describe some of the challenges we face as clinicians working with complex co-morbid presentations in a healthcare setting. It will briefly discuss the different modalities as suggested by NICE guidelines and expand on the implications of this guidance in relation to service development and constant restructuring, often acted out as an organisational procedure to avoid the harsh reality of limited resources within the NHS. The impact of this on patient care, organisational dynamics, the need for joined-up thinking, and contextual formulations will be discussed using case scenarios. Clinical examples will be used to highlight that pseudo hallucinations, core thoughts, self-to-self dialogues, which trigger "state shifts", can be understood and formulated using dialogic sequence analysis (Leiman, 1998) and concepts from cognitive analytic therapy (CAT). This article will offer some pointers as to how we as clinicians can build resilience, survive the powerful projections and countertransference reactions, recognise the importance of self-care, supervision, and personal therapy in order to be effective, minimise harm, and develop compassion for our patients.