Dan Pokorny

Ulm University | UULM

Received: October 09, 2017 Accepted: March 02, 2018 Published online: May 16, 2018 Issue release date: August 2018

State of consciousness at the time of the mental imagery task. The graph shows the score on each 5D-ASC subscale in each drug condition at time point T3 = 390 min after drug intake. LSD increased the score on all five 5D-ASC subscales. Ketanserin pre-treatment completely blocked all LSD-induced effects (all p = n.s.). Asterisks indicate significant...

Mental imagery experience. The graph shows the score on each visual analog subscale (VAS) in each drug condition. LSD increased VAS score for visual vividness and emotional arousal. Ketanserin pre-treatment completely blocked all LSD-induced effects (all p = n.s.). Asterisks indicate significant differences between LSD and placebo conditions (∗p <...

Rationale: Stimulation of serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptors by lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and related compounds such as psilocybin has previously been shown to increase primary process thinking – an ontologically and evolutionary early, implicit, associative, and automatic mode of thinking which is typically occurring during altered states of c...

Received: July 25, 2016 Accepted: February 06, 2017 Published online: September 14, 2017 Issue release date: October 2017

RationaleAccumulating evidence indicates that the mixed serotonin and dopamine receptor agonist lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) induces an altered state of consciousness that resembles dreaming. Objectives This study aimed to test the hypotheses that LSD produces dreamlike waking imagery and that this imagery depends on 5-HT2A receptor activation...

The contribution of attachment to human development and clinical risk is well established for children and adults, yet there is relatively limited knowledge about attachment in adolescence due to the poor availability of construct valid measures. The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) is a reliable and valid instrument to assess adult...

Oxytocin, a small neuropeptide of nine amino acids, has been characterized as the “hormone of affiliation” and is stimulated, for instance, in mothers when interacting with their offspring. Variations in maternal oxytocin levels were reported to predict differences in the quality of care provided by mothers. In this study, the Adult Attachment Proj...

In the last few decades, there has been an increase of experimental research on automatic unconscious processes concerning the evaluation of the self and others. Previous research investigated implicit aspects of romantic attachment using self-report measures as explicit instruments for assessing attachment style. There is a lack of experimental pr...

Hypertension is a major cardiovascular (CV) risk factor and is predicted by heightened CV reactivity to stress in healthy individuals. Patients with hypertension also show an altered stress response, while insecure attachment is linked to a heightened stress reactivity as well. This is the first study aiming to assess attachment representations in...

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are characterized by emotional instability, impaired emotion regulation and unresolved attachment patterns associated with abusive childhood experiences. We investigated the neural response during the activation of the attachment system in BPD patients compared to healthy controls using functio...

This chapter outlines and discusses the structures and procedures of quantitative data analysis in psychotherapy process research. These aspects will be described in two main steps: (a) exploring the complex psychotherapy process and usefully constructing the data structures to simplify a targeted reality and (b) statistically analyzing the data an...

Narrative case studies concerning the psychoanalytic process date back more than a century; Breuer and Freud were the pioneers of this research path. A great shift in methodology occurred after the development of computers that could work with both text and numbers. On the one hand, it became possible to store detailed, verbatim protocols of therap...

Zahlreiche medizinische Forschungsprojekte werden durch psychometrisch fundierte Fragebögen begleitet. Das Ziel ist, durch eine Serie geschlossener konkreter Fragen latente psychische Eigenschaften quantitativ zu messen. Da es sich um somatisch nicht-invasive Verfahren handelt, entsteht leicht die Meinung, dass der psychometrische Teil einer Studie...

Conversion disorder is a medical condition in which a person has paralysis, blindness, or other neurological symptoms that cannot be clearly explained physiologically. To date, there is neither specific nor conclusive treatment. In this paper, we draw together a number of disparate pieces of knowledge to propose a novel intervention to provide tran...

Abstract This study examines the relationship between the therapist's own attachment representation (Adult Attachment Interview, AAI) and the patient's attachment relationship to the therapist (client's attachment to the therapist, CATS). The attachment representations of n=22 psychotherapists who treated n=429 patients were assessed. A general eff...

Patients communicate their assessment of psychotherapists by remaining in the therapy or dropping out of it. The aim of this research was to explore what factors will enable us to predict whether a patient will remain in the psychotherapy with his or her psychotherapist and find solution. The sample included (93 or 235) psychotherapist-patient dya...

Background. Criteria for the discharge of preterm infants from hospital are missing or vary considerably between hospitals in Germany. In Ulm, it is the policy to discharge preterm infants early, i. e. when they are able 1) to maintain the body temperature without exogenous heat, 2) to drink the calculated amount of milk, 3) to breath regularly wit...

Functional disorders in urology are troubling for both patients and physicians. Moreover, advances in recent research promise to provide biological insights into psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunological pathways that are one important facet of chronic urogenital inflammations. We present a case of a middle-aged woman with long-lasting recurrent cystiti...

The helping alliance between patient and therapist is essential in the psychotherapeutic relationship. Recently, the links between patients' attachment and therapeutic alliance were examined. So far, there has been no published study that matched the patients and the patients' attachment representation to examine its role on the therapeutic relatio...

This research studies a single case of pathological grief as seen through the Balint-Malan focal psychotherapy model on a female patient diagnosed with major Depression. The focal treatment was developed throughout 14 sessions plus a follow-up session one month later. The chosen focus was the elaboration of unsolved grief for the death of her paren...

This research studies a single case of pathological grief as seen through the Balint-Malan focal psychotherapy model on a female patient diagnosed with major Depression. The focal treatment was developed throughout 14 sessions plus a follow-up session one month later. The chosen focus was the elaboration of unsolved grief for the death of her paren...

This single-case study explored the therapeutic ingredients of a psychotherapy method using an imagery technique. From a 19-session psychodynamic psychotherapy, 6 sessions containing guided affective imagery were compared with the remaining 13 sessions, which did not contain imagery. The completely transcribed sessions were screened by 3 computeriz...

Repeated interactions between infant and caregiver result in either secure or insecure relationship attachment patterns, and insecure attachment may affect individual emotion-regulation and health. Given that oxytocin enhances social approach behavior in animals and humans, we hypothesized that oxytocin might also promote the subjective experience...

Das Ulmer Archiv psychoanalytischer Fallberichte besteht aus 926 Abschlussarbeiten von Ausbildungskandidaten zum Psychoanalytiker. Die Studie fokussiert auf das Geschlecht von Therapeut und Patient und deren Wechselwirkungen auch in Hinsicht die gestellten Diagno-sen. Die Merk¬ma¬le werden hinsichtlich ihres Wandels innerhalb der vergangenen vier D...

The study focuses on therapist's and patient's gender and hence following reciprocal effects and also on the diagnoses and the respective changes within the last four decades (divided in three periods). The features were analysed by the above mentioned criteria with descriptive statistics. The Archive of Psychoanalytic Case Reports of Ulm contains...

Functional imaging studies have shown that individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) display prefrontal and amygdala dysfunction while viewing or listening to emotional or traumatic stimuli. The study examined for the first time the functional neuroanatomy of attachment trauma in BPD patients using functional magnetic resonance imaging...

This therapy process study investigates the use of guided affective imagery for tumor patients. The therapeutic access to tumor patients is generally described as complex and challenging because of a disturbed emotion regulation and a defensive focus on reality. After autologous blood stem cell transplantation, 29 patients were treated with psychot...

This empirical study reports about submissions on paper to a clinical journal during a 5-year time span. The intersubjective agreement of evaluating revisions on an evaluation form of the journal with preformulated categories is described and outlines the improvement of the submissions during the peer-reviewing process, as the reviewers see it. In...

There are many clinical reports on art therapy, but there are few data from experimental research. The main goal of this study was to investigate the interrater agreement of 86 raters who evaluated a picture created during an art therapy session. This rating was based on formal (color, lines, shapes) and contextual criteria. The resulting interrate...

In einer Querschnittstudie wurden studienbezogene Belastungen, Gesundheitserleben und Beziehungsmuster von Medizinstudenten untersucht. Die Studienbelastungen wurden mit dem Fragebogen von Jurkat et al., die gesundheitsbezogene Lebensqualität mit dem „Short Form- (SF-)36“ und die Beziehungsmuster sowohl zum Partner als auch zum Freund mit dem Bezie...

Alegre, RS. Baseado em trabalho de dissertação de mestrado da primeira autora, intitulado "Um estudo da relação entre o padrão transferencial e a aliança terapêutica de pacientes em psicoterapia psicanalítica", apresentado à Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul em 2006. INTRODUÇÃO O Beziehungs-Muster Fragebogen (BeMus-3), conhecido na literatu...

INTRODUÇÃO: O desenvolvimento da versão em português do Brasil do Beziehungs-Muster Fragebogen, conhecido na literatura internacional como Relationship Patterns Questionnaire, questionário que avalia o padrão central de relação, visa à introdução, em nosso meio, de uma medida auto-aplicável para implementação de projetos de pesquisa cuja questão en...

The authors provide a perspective on how psychoanalytic process research can be implemented. This is based on a process research model described elsewhere and summarizes the kinds of studies that can be situated on the four levels of the model. The authors summarize multiple empirical studies that were performed in a completely tape-recorded psycho...

The Relationship Patterns Questionnaire RPQ was designed to assess the relationship patterns concerning the individual's own behavior as well as the anticipated behavior of an important reference person. In this study, the questionnaire is examined psychometrically by using a sample of psychosomatic inpatients (N = 160). The underlying circumplex s...

In this study, we investigated how the birth of a very low birth weight preterm (VLBW) infant influences the mother–infant interaction at 3 months. We also focused on the impact of the infant's neurobiological risk and maternal anxiety, and their interaction. The comparison of the VLBW preterm sample (n = 79) with an external full-term sample (n =...

Two literary works of authors suffering from anorexia nervosa were analyzed with the method of the core conflictual relationship theme (CCRT) to prove that novels and/or personal accounts may reveal the same maladaptive relationship patterns typically revealed in psychotherapy sessions with this nosologic group. Two novels were selected which promi...

Zusammenfassung. Interpersonale Zirkumplexmodelle werden zunehmend als Grundlage verschiedener Selbstbeurteilungsinstrumente genutzt. Kann die Zweidimensionalitat dieser Verfahren faktorenanalytisch nachgewiesen werden, wird die kreisformige Anordnung mittels “directional statistics“ untersucht. Da es widerspruchliche Ansatze zur Kennzeichnung der...

Der Beziehungs-Muster-Fragebogen BeMus, der das eigene sowie das erwartete Beziehungsverhalten einer wichtigen Bezugsperson erfasst, wird anhand einer stationär-psychosomatischen Patientenstichprobe (n = 160) psychometrisch überprüft. Die zugrunde liegende Zirkumplexstruktur konnte faktorenanalytisch nahezu bestätigt werden. Auch die Zusammenhänge...

The current version of the Relationship Patterns Questionnaire (RPQ) is presented as a successor to the Interpersonal Relationship Patterns Questionnaire (IRP; Kurth, 1998). Both the items and the scales are theory based and are constructed on the basis of an interpersonal circumplex model found as a result of factorial analyses of the IRP and the...

This article reviews measures used to assess relationship patterns, 1 of which is the Relationship Patterns Questionnaire (RPQ) developed by Kurth and Pokorny (1999). The RPQ is based on the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (Benjamin, 1974) and the core conflictual relationship theme (Luborsky, 1977). Using data from a representative German p...

Die Vernderung pathogenetisch bedeutsamer Beziehungsmuster gilt als wesentliches psychotherapeutisches Behandlungsziel. Um zielgerichtete Vernderungen von Beziehungsstrukturen zu erreichen, bedarf es sowohl einer Diagnostik und Beschreibung solcher Beziehungsmuster, einer darauf zielenden Behandlungstechnik als auch einer Verlaufskontrolle und Eval...

In this study the present form of the Relationship Patterns Questionnaire (RePat) will be presented as a successor of the Interpersonal Relationship Patterns Questionnaire (IRQ). Similar to the IRQ the RePat assesses the behavior of relationship concerning both one's own and the anticipated behavior of an important person on the basis of the SASB m...

The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method (CCRT) is without doubt one of the most widely used relationship structure instruments in the field of psychodynamic psychotherapy research. Despite the important and sustained criticism of the German translation of the original Anglo-Saxon description of clusters and of standard categories, research i...

The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method, developed by Lester Luborsky, is regarded as an established technique for assessing central relationship patterns in psychotherapy research. Numerous studies have investigated associated research areas and clinical applications. Many of these studies have reported problems with the CCRT method...

This study, carried out at three different university centers contributes to validating the valence dimension of the CCRT-method. Working on the state of the CCRT-research on affective evaluation of relationship narratives, the connection between the valence dimension of the responses from others (RO), responses of the self (RS) and the severity of...

In the present study a psychoanalytic therapy was assessed by the CCRT method for the first time. We used reformulated categories for CCRT scoring. The data analyses were based not only on the most frequent categories but on newly developed alternative strategies. We could determine specific relationship patterns with special objects reflecting asp...

In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wurde erstmals eine psychoanalytische Therapie im Verlauf mit der Methode des Zentralen Beziehungs-Konflikt-Themas (ZBKT) untersucht. Unter Verwendung von reformulierten kategorialen Strukturen der ZBKT-Methode und einer alternativen Auswertungsstrategie, die sich nicht nur auf die Analyse der absolut häufigsten Kat...

In our study the method of classification of verbalised emotions according to DAHL is unsed on a large clinical sample for the first time. The results are compared with the analysis of relationship patterns with the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method (CCRT). There are correlations between the component responses from others of the CCRT meth...

(i) The procedure introduced here for the clustering of frequency vectors takes into account the uncertainty arising from dealing with small observed frequencies. The smaller observed absolute frequencies, the more uncertainty about the "true" probability vector. The object is not represented by a single point in the multidimensional space but rath...

On the basis of transcribed sessions of a psychoanalytic longterm psychotherapy of a patient with an anxiety neurosis the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method is used. Differences between relationship episodes in dreams and narratives in the dream session are demonstrated. Relationship patterns in dream episodes reveal wishes more explicitly...

In the present study the Relationship Episode Paradigm Interviews of 70 female patients with different psychoneurotic diseases were analysed with respect to object-specific patterns with the CCRT method. The most frequent categories are the same in all relationship episodes and in subsamples of relationship episodes with mother and father. These ca...

In the present study the Relationship Episode Paradigm Interviews of 70 female patients with different psychoneurotic diseases were analysed with respect to object-specific patterns with the CCRT method. The most frequent categories are the same in all relationship episodes and in subsamples of relationship episodes with mother and father. These ca...

This exploratory study tests the question of a relationship between attachment related variables and relationship patterns in a sample of adult psychotherapy patients. Based upon clinical interviews performed at the beginning of an inpatient psychotherapy attachment was classified according to the adult attachment prototype rating (AAPR), relations...

This exploratory study tests the question of a relationship between attachment related variables and relationship patterns in a sample of adult psychotherapy patients. Based upon clinical interviews performed at the beginning of an inpatient psychotherapy attachment was classified according to the adult attachment prototype rating (AAPR), relations...

Escapes by forensic psychiatric patients from indefinite detention give cause for concern both to the hospital staff and the public. They fear that the patient might again commit a serious crime. These fears do not correspond with the alternatives of a first escape or a repetition of one or more earlier escapes during which no crime was committed....

Relationship Anecdote Paradigm Interviews of 39 patients suffering from different psychoneurotical and psychosomatical diseases were compared before and after psychodynamic oriented inpatient therapy. Results reveal changes in various categories, the valence of the responses of the subject, the interaction partners and in the kind of the relationsh...