Multimedia Psychotherapy

A Psychodynamic Approach for Mourning in the Technological Age

Domenico Arturo Nesci

Multimedia Psychotherapy is a new technique that helps patients to mourn and overcome loss and grief experiences as well as blocks and inhibitions in the life cycle. The method can be easily summarized in 5 steps: the intake (where the therapist explains the technique to the patient), the “picture sessions” (where the patient, helped by his/her own family, brings in pictures and works them through freely associating with memories and emotions evoked by the images), the “music session” (during which a song or music is chosen by the patient in order to become the soundtrack of the “psychodynamic montage” which a multimedia artist, who collaborates with the therapist, will produce and then give back to the therapist), the “screening session” (where patient and therapist watch, comment, and elaborate the video together), and the outcome. Although this psychotherapeutic technique is rooted in a psychodynamic approach, it can be applied and integrated within any form of psychotherapy. Multimedia Psychotherapy is conceived as a manual in order to let all health professionals who work as psychotherapists to learn the new technique and apply it with their own patients. Excerpts from sessions are quoted to describe each step of the therapy. At the same time, two theoretical chapters are devoted to explain how and why the “memory objects” created by the multimedia artist are so effective in helping patients to mourn their complicated grief and/or overcome their blocks or inhibitions in normal development. Finally a new supervision model (the Clinic and Dreams Workshop) is described as well as a training group experience, once again through excerpts of such new teaching seminars. The book is written as a “story” in the format of “narrative medicine.” It ends opening new horizons: how to use Multimedia Psychotherapy to make “memory objects for the future,” during pregnancy and prenatal life, or to help Alzheimer patients not to lose their capacity to recognize their own relatives.

Jason Aronson, Inc.

Pages: 226 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7657-0913-4 • Hardback • December 2012 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-0-7657-0914-1 • eBook • December 2012 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

Subjects: Psychology / Movements / Psychoanalysis, Psychology / General, Psychology / Psychotherapy / General, Psychology / Psychotherapy / Couples & Family, Family & Relationships / Death, Grief, Bereavement, Psychology / Grief & Loss, Social Science / Science and Technology

Multimedia Psychotherapy

A Psychodynamic Approach for Mourning in the Technological Age

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Multimedia Psychotherapy is a new technique that helps patients to mourn and overcome loss and grief experiences as well as blocks and inhibitions in the life cycle. The method can be easily summarized in 5 steps: the intake (where the therapist explains the technique to the patient), the “picture sessions” (where the patient, helped by his/her own family, brings in pictures and works them through freely associating with memories and emotions evoked by the images), the “music session” (during which a song or music is chosen by the patient in order to become the soundtrack of the “psychodynamic montage” which a multimedia artist, who collaborates with the therapist, will produce and then give back to the therapist), the “screening session” (where patient and therapist watch, comment, and elaborate the video together), and the outcome. Although this psychotherapeutic technique is rooted in a psychodynamic approach, it can be applied and integrated within any form of psychotherapy. Multimedia Psychotherapy is conceived as a manual in order to let all health professionals who work as psychotherapists to learn the new technique and apply it with their own patients. Excerpts from sessions are quoted to describe each step of the therapy. At the same time, two theoretical chapters are devoted to explain how and why the “memory objects” created by the multimedia artist are so effective in helping patients to mourn their complicated grief and/or overcome their blocks or inhibitions in normal development. Finally a new supervision model (the Clinic and Dreams Workshop) is described as well as a training group experience, once again through excerpts of such new teaching seminars. The book is written as a “story” in the format of “narrative medicine.” It ends opening new horizons: how to use Multimedia Psychotherapy to make “memory objects for the future,” during pregnancy and prenatal life, or to help Alzheimer patients not to lose their capacity to recognize their own relatives.

Details

Jason Aronson, Inc.

Pages: 226 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7657-0913-4 • Hardback • December 2012 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-0-7657-0914-1 • eBook • December 2012 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

Subjects: Psychology / Movements / Psychoanalysis, Psychology / General, Psychology / Psychotherapy / General, Psychology / Psychotherapy / Couples & Family, Family & Relationships / Death, Grief, Bereavement, Psychology / Grief & Loss, Social Science / Science and Technology

Author

Domenico A. Nesci, MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist, criminologist, and psychoanalyst (Member of the International Psychoanalytic Association by virtue of Full Membership in the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society). He is in the Faculty of the School of Medicine of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, President of the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Research and Training of Health Professionals (IIPRTHP) and Co-Director of the Scuola Internazionale di Psicoterapia nel Setting Istituzionale (SIPSI) in Rome, Italy. He taught at Stanford (Department of Psychology) and UCLA (Department of Political Science and Department of Psychiatry). For his teaching activities from 1999 to 2001, Dr. Nesci was awarded Distinguished Visiting Professor by the Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Association of UCLA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Collaborators
Foreword (by Robert O. Pasnau)
“Am I Crazy?”
Introduction
Chapter 1: The First Case
Chapter 2: Multimedia Psychotherapy: Story of a Training Group
Chapter 3: Multimedia Psychotherapy Step by Step: from Intake to Outcome
Chapter 4: Selecting the Pictures
Chapter 5: Choosing the Soundtrack
Chapter 6: Working with the Artist
Chapter 7: The Screening Session and the Outcome
Chapter 8: Theoretical Reflections on Multimedia Psychotherapy
Chapter 9: Supervision in Multimedia Psychotherapy
Chapter 10: Looking at Multimedia Psychotherapy from Different Perspectives
Chapter 11: New Horizons in Multimedia Psychotherapy
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Reviews

Dr. Nesci and colleagues have written a book that integrates classical psychoanalytic theory, anthropology, the use of 21st century media technology, personal and family revelations, group dynamics—a novel approach to understand and work through the psychology of loss, teaching, and supervision. It manages to be academic, yet eminently readable and has a three dimensional quality, as it comes alive to the reader. This book offers a new perspective and technique to alleviating suffering which, as Dr. Nesci shows, can only occur in the context of our allowing ourselves to be connected to others.
— Ira Lesser, M.D., Harbor-UCLA Medical Center

Multimedia Psychotherapy presents a fascinating, engaging, and deeply personal account of Professor Nesci’s exploration into “active” psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Loosely related to art and play therapy, Nesci’s team involves the patient in a vivid, personal, visual, and auditory search using advanced cinemagraphic techniques. His thorough psychoanalytic understanding of transference and countertransference are welcomed cautions. Beyond a presentation of a technique, drawing on his extensive psychotherapy with people dealing with cancer, the book is a treasure trove of understanding of the role of loss, major and minor, as intrinsically involved in the important transitions of life.
— Jerome D. Oremland, MD, San Fransisco Institute of Psychoanalysis and Pscyhotherapy

Psychoanalysis started as a method of investigation and treatment that eventually lead to the formulation of general ideas about the workings of the mind. This was the inductive method used by Freud. But it was never said that we could not proceed deductively, from psychoanalytic knowledge down, to introduce other methods of treatment that could be helpful in situations where the classical psychoanalytic process and setting are not readily accessible. Dr. Nesci was able to come forward with one such method, at once based on psychoanalytic wisdom and very creative in its own right, while also taking advantage of the contemporary means of scenic representation.
— Dominique Scarfone, M.D., Université de Montréal; Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and Institute