Stuart T. Hauser

A narrative analysis of helplessness in depression

The transcripts of semistructured clinical interviews with forty psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents were subjected to narrative analysis in an effort to map the logic of their explanations as they spontaneously talked about helplessness experiences, and to determine how helplessness is embedded in broader story lines. Three types of narrative composition were discerned, and are discussed by means of excerpts from the interviews. In a first and predominant type of narrative, a disturbing confrontation with another is pivotal: the others intentions are obscure; this frightens the narrator, who does not know what to do. Helplessness arises as a direct result of not knowing how to manage the “unbearable riddle” of the others intentions. In the second, more marginal type of narrative, helplessness is embedded in an account of emptiness and boredom. The protagonist relates enduring experiences of emptiness due to loss and the suffering consequent on it. In the third, also more marginal type of narrative, helplessness is framed in a context of failure: the protagonist adheres to strict standards, feels he or she has fallen short, and concludes that he or she is a failure. Only the first type of narrative is significantly related to the psychiatric diagnoses of mood disorder and major depression.

The Future of Psychoanalytic Research: Turning Points and New Opportunities:

T he fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association presents a special occasion for an issue celebrating the growth and diversity of psychoanalytic research. We are currently witness to an array of rigorous inquiries targeting psychoanalytic theory, processes, practice, and outcomes (see, e.g., Bucci 2001; Fonagy 2000; Luborsky et al. 2001; Luborsky and Crits-Christoph 1990; Shapiro and Emde 1995). This rich landscape represents the fruition of much successful collaboration across several related disciplines— developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, neuropsychology, and psycholinguistics. Psychoanalytic investigators are increasingly engaged in the interdisciplinary boundary crossing urged on us a decade ago by Holzman and Aronson (1992) in their challenging paper, “Psychoanalysis and Its Neighboring Sciences: Paradigms and Opportunities.” More recently this motif surfaced again, in Bucci’s ref lections (2001) on the implications of several research reports. Emphasizing the need for psychoanalysis to further enhance its links with neighboring disciplines and to continue building bridges between psychoanalytic investigators and other scientists, she speaks of a “psychoanalytic science”:

The Interplay of Genes, Environments, and Psychoanalysis

W begin the 2008 JAPA Research Sections with a window onto a realm of contemporary research that holds great, but as yet almost completely untapped, value for psychoanalysis. In our featured paper, Suzanne Haddad and her colleagues serve as welcome guides to the rapidly expanding world of gene and environment research (“naturenurture interplay”)—an interdisciplinary domain currently being pursued with stunning innovation, vigor, and energy (see Kendler and Prescott 2006; Rutter 2007; Torgeson 2006). The great promise—in both findings and methods—of the new genetics studies has been recognized, often with well-deserved fanfare, by our colleagues in psychiatry, neuroscience, and the behavioral sciences (e.g., Caspi et al. 2002, 2003; Rutter 2006). Haddad and colleagues now cogently argue for yet another new bridge— from the insights of behavior genetics studies to psychoanalytic perspectives and interventions. In recent years, papers addressing neuroscience interfaces with psychoanalysis and other disciplines—social cognition, developmental psychology—have appeared in JAPA and elsewhere (see, e.g., Gerber and Peterson 2006, in press; Mayes 2003; Peterson et al. 2007; Roffman and Gerber 2008). With rare exceptions (e.g., Mayes 2003), contemporary research addressing genetics and human development, personality, psychopathology, and environmental experience has received scant attention in psychoanalytic quarters. This benign neglect is not surprising, in light of genetics studies’ inherently complex constructs and methods, and their vocabulary, so unfamiliar to most psychoanalysts and mental health researchers. These dissemination and translation difficulties are compounded, as Hadddad correctly notes, by the fact that most genetics studies involve abstract constructs applying to classes of variables, use large samples, and address but a few key dimensions. These features of genetics studies stand ja P a