Two Shrinks Pod

This week, Two Shrinks tackle humour. Hunter and Amy agree with toddlers that wearing underpants on your head is indeed hilarious, snort over funny words and discuss the role of feedback in enjoyment of cartoons. We also chat about the role of humour in therapy - where can it help and when does it go too far? As always, we wrap up with things we came across. Hunter justifies his recent earworm and reads a perfectly ‘p’ preoccupied proposal to the APA before Amy finishes up with the tragedy of rabbit auricular amputation.

Hunter’s articles:

What makes some words funny?

Humour and psychotherapy

Amy’s articles:

Toddler humour production

Facial feedback and enjoyment in children with autism

TWCA:

Positive and negative earworms

Auricular amputations in rabbits

A perfectionistic proposal to the APA

Pod 33 - The penultimate episode of our personality disorder series takes a look at Dependent Personality Disorder - when someone has an excessive need to be taken care of, is submissive, clingy and fears separation. Whilst it is a rare PD (<1%) all of us have dependent elements and Amy and Hunter also compare it to some of the other personality disorders discussed in the previous pods. There is, as usual, good discussion about different theories to explain this disorder (hear Hunter get frustrated about psycho-dynamic theories) and finishes up with talking about how to do therapy to address the problems of this disorder. For TWCA Hunter spends a moment talking about Dr Christine Blasey Ford and her research, then pivots to discussing what your resume photo really tells others, whilst Amy succumbs to more research about the tv show Survivor (hey we have a brand and we are sticking to it).

Dependent Personality Disorder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependent_personality_disorder

Personality Disorders in Modern Life, 2nd Edn. Millon & colleagues (copies of pdfs of this can be found for free online if you know where to look)
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edn (DSM-5)

Things We Came Across

(Hunter) Dr Ford https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Blasey_Ford
Resume photos: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886916309023

(Amy) Survivor - chapter “Do you know who your friends are? An analysis of voting patterns and alliances in the reality tv show Survivor in : https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Reality_Television.html?id=mFVHXwAACAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

41 – Ever wondered what Voldermort’s attachment style is? Does Bellatrix Le Strange meet criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder? What about Snape? Is his behaviour schizoid, obsessive or best explained by complex grief?

If you are a fan of Harry Potter then this is the Two Shrinks Pod episode for you. In this episode Amy and Hunter go through each of the ten personality disorders discussed in the personality disorder series last year and discuss which characters from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books could have personality disorders. They also discuss possible differential diagnoses and ponder the use of words starting with P in the DSM-5 diagnostic categories. For a bit of fun Hunter gives Amy the Two Shrinks equivalent of her O.W.L.s, quizzing her on her Harry Potter knowledge at the end of each personality cluster.

This week we take a look at Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and answer our own burning questions: What is it like interacting with someone with NPD? How can you tell the difference between traits and diagnosable NPD? What are the theories about how it develops? And of course, which politicians meet criteria and what are the ethics of labelling them as such?

As always, we wrap up with Things We Came Across – Amy chats about why healthy food tastes better if you've prepared it yourself and Hunter chuckles about scanning salmon. Join us next time for an interview with a psychologist using schema therapy with clients with NPD!

NPD background reading - Diagnosis, theories on development and interpersonal experiences:

Personality Disorders in Modern Life, 2nd Edn. Millon & colleagues
Clinician's Guide to the Diagnosis and Treatment of Personality Disorders. Fox

Alliance and the therapeutic relationship thanks to the work of Elsa Ronningstam and colleagues:
Alliance Building & NPD: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jclp.21898
Empathy & NPD: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-04665-001
Recent research in NPD: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40473-016-0060-y
Self-esteem & emotion regulation in NPD: https://bpded.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40479-017-0054-8
Politicians:

Trump & NPD: https://www.statnews.com/2017/09/06/donald-trump-mental-illness-diagnosis/
Trump's bills: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/dec/29/donald-trump/has-donald-trump-signed-more-bills-anyone-no/
Kevin Rudd: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/grandiose-narcissist-the-secret-diagnosis-that-helped-bring-down-kevin-rudd-20130909-2tfum.html

TWCA:

Does self-prepared food taste better? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26690640
Scanning Salmon: https://www.wired.com/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is dead, but like Elvis, there will still be citings: https://www.jpsychores.com/article/S0022-3999(12)00093-1/abstract

51 - So Amy and Hunter decided to do another episode of therapists on film and television. In part because they realised that there was an over representation of male therapists in the previous episode and mostly because it is the holidays and they really enjoyed doing something a bit lighter.

In this episode they play and talk about clips of therapists from Web Therapy, Pure, Lars and the Real Girl, Newsroom, Blades of Glory, The Sopranos (including Dr Melfi’s supervisor), the Sixth Sense (for the obligatory child psych content), Kath and Kim (for an Australian angle), Two and a half men (because Hunter’s brother loves that show) and of course the excellent Good Will Hunting. Hear Amy and Hunter discuss what is good therapy and what is not, including diatribes about CBT for OCD and whether ACT is appropriate, as well as the best way to engage a child in therapy.

Don’t forget to check out the excellent episode discussing Good Will Hunting on the @schoolofmovies podcast feed for a great discussion of trauma and therapy : https://player.fm/series/school-of-movies-2361951/good-will-hunting