The aim of this paper is to present a theoretical and empirical overview of the hypothesis that patients' behavior in psychotherapy can be understood as an expression of their efforts to disprove their pathogenic beliefs by testing them in the therapeutic relationship. According to Control-Mastery Theory (CMT;Gazzillo, 2016;Silberschatz, 2005;Weiss, 1986Weiss, , 1994, psychopathology stems from unconscious pathogenic beliefs developed in response to early traumas. Pathogenic beliefs associate the achievement of healthy goals with a variety of unconsciously perceived dangers. Thanks to the inborn human motivation to adapt to reality and to the power of adaptive unconscious mental functioning, patients come to therapy with a unconscious plan to overcome their pathogenic beliefs by testing them with their therapists. Tests are consciously or unconsciously devised actions aimed at disproving pathogenic beliefs. CMT describes two broad categories of tests: transference tests and passive-into-active tests. Tests require specific responses from the therapist to be passed. When therapists pass patients' tests, patients feel safer and may make therapeutic progress; when tests are failed, patients feel endangered and may get worse. Consistent with CMT assumptions, studies on testing have shown that a therapist passing a patient's tests is associated with immediate positive effects on the patient, but more studies are needed.

The efficiency and selectivity of tumour targeting by several tetra-n-propylporphycene (TPPn) and tetrakis(methoxyethyl-)porphycene (TMPn) derivatives have been studied by administering 3.76 mmol/kg of aqueous or liposomal porphycene formulations to BALB/c mice bearing an i.m. implanted MS-2 fibrosarcoma. These 2 parameters have been studied as a function of the type of substituents linked to the 9-position of the macrocycle by amide, ester or ether functional groups. The pharmacokinetic properties appear to be controlled mainly by the degree of porphycene hydrophobicity, as evaluated by measuring their retention times in a C 18 column for HPLC. Thus, the post-injection time (T 50 ) at which the porphycene concentration in the plasma decreases to 50% of the initial value ranged from a few minutes for the less hydrophobic to several hours for the more hydrophobic porphycenes. An increase in hydrophobicity also was accompanied by an enhanced efficiency and selectivity of tumour targeting. The less hydrophobic porphycenes showed a maximum tumour uptake of 0.5-2 nmol/g of tissue at 10-20 min after administration with a tumour/peri-tumoural concentration ratio around 2-3, while those with higher hydrophobicity reached tumour concentrations of 7-8 nmol/g at 24-48 hr after administration with concentration ratios higher than 20. In the past few years, several photosensitisers, mainly belonging to the porphyrin class or analogues thereof, have been proposed as phototherapeutic agents for tumours, and a few of them are now registered for clinical use or are in phase II/III clinical trials. This modality is usually termed ''photodynamic therapy'' (PDT) and can be potentially extended to the treatment of some nononcological diseases (Levy and Obochi, 1996). In spite of such intensive research and promising developments, the factors which control the efficiency and the rate of photosensitiser accumulation in tumour and normal tissues are only partially understood.The data obtained through a variety of pharmacokinetic investigations with Photofrin II, a mixture of several haematoporphyrinrelated compounds which has been so far most frequently used in pre-clinical and clinical PDT, appear to indicate that the tumourlocalising activity is particularly large for some oligomeric components endowed with a marked degree of hydrophobicity (Marcus, 1992). This conclusion received further support from different lines of evidence: (i) the affinity of sulphonated porphyrins (Kessel et al., 1987) and phthalocyanines (Peng et al., 1991) for experimental tumours was found to increase upon decreasing the number of sulphonate groups, hence with decreasing hydrophilicity; (ii) the efficiency of tumour targeting by a series of haematoporphyrin diesters increased with the increasing length of the esterifying hydrocarbon chains (Berg et al., 1993), and similar results were obtained with some Ge(IV)-phthalocyanines bearing different hydrocarbon axial ligands to the metal ion (Soncin et al., 1995); (iii) incorporation of the photosensitiser into ...

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