Integrative, Attachment-Based Approach to Management & Treatment of Patients w/ Persistent Symptoms

[Dolphin]

(Not a recommendation)

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-23300-0_9

Chapter
Improving Patient Treatment with Attachment Theory

pp 127-144


An Integrative, Attachment-Based Approach to the Management and Treatment of Patients with Persistent Somatic Complaints

• Patrick Luyten
• , Peter Fonagy

Abstract

Many patients seen in clinical practice present with persistent fatigue and pain-related problems.

Although this patient group is very heterogeneous, many of them have difficulties establishing a working relationship with health professionals, which negatively influences their treatment and prognosis.

In this chapter, we present a broad, integrative attachment-based approach to the understanding, management, and treatment of these patients.

The focus is on three related features of patients presenting with persistent somatic complaints:
(a) attachment issues;
(b) impairments in (embodied) mentalizing, that is, the capacity to reflect on one’s own embodied self and others; and
(c) problems with epistemic trust – the capacity to trust others as a source of knowledge about the world.

We also outline the implications of this approach for our understanding, management, and treatment of these patients

 

[Esther12]

Seems that they think the problem lies with patients?

 

[Mark]

(c) problems with epistemic trust – the capacity to trust others as a source of knowledge about the world.

I think this may be the funniest thing I've read all week.

Maybe next year they'll dig a little deeper on this and uncover a significant relationship between diminished capacity to trust others and severe exposure to psychobabblers presenting horseshit as if it were "knowledge about the world".

Or maybe they'll never stop blaming the patients for the problems they cause.

 

[Skippa]

Physicians and therapists could start by always wearing dark glasses around patients, thereby hiding their rolly eyes as they relay their symptoms.

Be a good start.

 

[sarah darwins]

This is beyond parody. The alarming thing is that if you do a web search on "medical school attachment theory", it's clear that doctors are getting exposed to stuff like this. The subheading for that chapter is:

A Guide for Primary Care Practitioners and Specialists​

I heard a suggestion recently that maybe there are cyclical neuroviruses which cause the human population to have "stupid centuries". We must be going through one.

 

[Effi]

This Patrick Luyten guy's field of interest seems to be

Main research interests
Affective Spectrum Disorders (depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia) from an integrative psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral and neuroscience perspective.

So CFS as a mood disorder... yawn!

 

[msf]

Shouldn´t that (in the title) be psychosomatic complaints? Or are they somatic complaints that have a psychosomatic cause? It all gets very confusing when you believe in mumbo-jumbo. I just heard a term for people like this: ´woo-peddler.´

 

[Persimmon]

Shouldn´t that (in the title) be psychosomatic complaints? Or are they somatic complaints that have a psychosomatic cause? It all gets very confusing when you believe in mumbo-jumbo. I just heard a term for people like this: ´woo-peddler.´

The more natural terminology for these authors might have been "neurosis" or "hysteria".

By way of explanation, both are modern-day Freudians. Fogany is the Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis at UCL, and CEO of London's Anna Freud Centre. Luyten is Acting Director of UCL's PhD programme in Psychoanalytic Studies. (Yes, they're from the same university of Jonathan Edwards.) Fogany also holds an appointment at Baylor College's psychiatry department.

While Freudian Studies are a trendy area in university humanities departments, these days, Freudianism long ago became an embarrassment to university medical faculties. This pair are from a rare and endangered species, being genuine psychoanalysts in (well, on the fringes of) the world of academic medicine - rearguard handouts who have outlasted most of their bretheran by a couple of decades.

Presumably, in the spirit of Freudian ideology, they'd embrace the ideas of secondary gain and childhood sexual trauma being central to any understanding of ME or CFS.

 

[Woolie]

Shouldn´t that (in the title) be psychosomatic complaints?

"Somatic" is code for psychosomatic/psychogenic. There's a lot of secret code in this area, to obscure from the patients what they really think.

I want a copy of this chapter - it looks like an extra special treat! Gonna see if I can interloan it.

 

[alex3619]

I want a copy of this chapter - it looks like an extra special treat! Gonna see if I can interloan it.

Wait till you have a bad day to read it. You could then use the laugh.