We've been busy building the Case Conference

• Welcome to the BOL Forum on Shame and Affect Theory by John Grohol, 2/10/96
  
  

Within a day or so, Gil Levin and the other magicians of Behavior OnLine will make public the new system of case conferences. Like everything else here on BOL, it is experimental in format. For these first few cases, I will present the case of someone from my own practice, enough details (subtly, I hope) changed that often even the patient would not be able to be sure it was his/her case. But what remains will be a real case and the real way (for better or worse) I handled it.

Nevertheless, the purpose of the case conference is really not to show how the presenter handles a case, however much we are all voyeurs for such stuff. It is to allow experts from three different realms of thought an opportunity to show how they would have worked through the problems presented by an individual patient. Gil Levin will probably explain the process in detail in his next message to all of us, but the disciplines of Adlerian, Affect Theory, and Control Mastery will be represented.

Whenever I take the role of case presenter, the commentary for the Affect Theory group will be written by Vick Kelly, who is Training Director of the Tomkins Institute and an editor of the Bulletin of the Tomkins Institute. He and I developed much of this clinical system together, and you will find his ideas both useful and easy to put in practice. Eventually, I hope he will take the role of presenter and demonstrate his trailblazing method of working with couples.

For now, then, we look forward to your response to the clinical case conference and hope you will be as interested in our attempts to help people as you will be tolerant of our errors as clinicians. Ain't no magicians around here, guys.

• Looking forward to case conference by Peter B. Bloom, M.D., 6/22/96
• The Case of Otto Freund has begun! by Gil Levin, 6/26/96