Dear ,

First of all, thank you to those who filled out last week's survey! If you haven't, please do so here: https://tally.so/r/woBzrP. I've enjoyed going through all of your responses. 

The result was that most of you just want me to keep doing what I'm already doing: Sharing interesting things I find. Nothing easier than that 🫡

So today, I'll share my notes on another article I came across through a mention in McWilliams's book Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (p. 245f).

📚 What I'm currently reading: The Illusion of Mental Health. An older (1993) article by Shedler, Mayman, and Manis. You can find it here: https://jonathanshedler.com/PD...

I'll give you my interesting take-aways below 👇

Three short take-aways

1. Denying stress doesn’t mean it’s not there (and more importantly: it still affects us)
2. If stress cannot be perceived consciously because it is defended against, it shows in the body and may be a risk factor for physical illness
3. When it comes to self-report questionnaires: Are we assessing mental health - or just denial?

Three long take-aways

1. Psychodynamics + the Heart

In last week’s newsletter, I shared a podcast about psychodermatology. Likewise, there are theories and research about the psychodynamics of the heart and heart attacks. Interesting bits in this article:

“They concluded that defensive efforts to compensate for insecurity are at the core of the coronary-prone personality. Moreover, the rate of second heart attacks was reduced by nearly 50% among patients who received psychotherapy, relative to a control group of patients who received normal medical care.” (p. 1119)

“In principle, the more a person defends against awareness of distress, the greater the physiological consequences. This implies that for subjects judged distressed by the clinician, lower Neuroticism scores should be associated with higher levels of coronary reactivity (because lower Neuroticism scores imply more denial of distress).” (p. 1122)

2. Early Memory Test

“The clinician [of Study I] treated the memories as a projective test (like the Rorschach or TAT). He assumed that the memories do not simply represent factual accounts of real events. Rather, they are seen through the lenses of the subject's present psychological make-up. These "lenses" may influence the selection, content, and telling of the memories. The central issue in judging between psychological health or distress is how the person sees himself or herself in relation to the world, and whether the relations with the world are associated with good or bad feelings: Is the world seen as somehow threatening, dangerous, malevolent, or frustrating? Is it associated with injury, disaster, traumatic punishment, or frustration? Does the person represent himself as at the mercy of external forces? These kinds of representations of self in relation to the world may indicate distress. (p. 1123)

I’ve come across this in Adlerian psychology as well, where it’s referred to as “Early Recollections”. Probably Adler pioneered something and got no credit - again 😅

This also reminded me of Freud’s idea of “Deckerinnerungen” (= cover memories).

3. “Positive Illusion"

You’ve likely heard the assumption that mildly depressive people perceive the world more accurately than “normal” people, who are said to wear lightly rose-colored glasses.

This paper makes the point that this has to do with the “deniers” that mask as “normal” people. Truly mentally healthy people do not distort reality more than depressive people.

I thought that was so interesting and made a lot more sense.

PS: I’m currently working on compiling all the books and articles I ever read (ok, whatever I can still recall) into a database. I thought it would be fun for me to have it as a resource - and maybe also for you? If it’s ready, I’ll send it your way :)