More search tips

Narrowing your Search

To narrow your search results you can search for a particular sentence or phrase by putting it into quotation marks. This will give you publications where that direct sentence or phrase is found, giving you more precise search results.

Another method of ensuring you get the right search results is to use a "wildcard search". This is used when you are searching a term that could have spelling problems or different grammatical forms. For example, if you are looking for terms relating to enact, enactment, enacted or enacting you can simply search for enact* and this will search for the term in all its forms. The screen below shows how your search should look:

Later, we will provide a summary of the various wild cards and what they can do to further refine your search.

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Finding Footnotes, References and Other Works by an Author

Now let's return to Winnicott's article "The Use of an Object".

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Who Cites Whom?

We have seen there are thirty-nine papers by Winnicott, D.W on the database. You might also be interested in who cites them and for what purpose. To see all the References to Winnicott in PEP Web click the search tab and type Winnicott, D. W in the search box.

Hit search to see the results - we found 1000 articles where he is quoted. (This is in fact an underestimate as the system is limited to only returning the first 1000 hits in response to any query).

Note: Article searches (radio button clicked article) have been set up in such a way as to exclude bibliographies. This means the results reflect discussion of an author in the text, not the list of references at the end of an article. If you are looking for a match in a bibliography click the References radio button.

Now you can move through the actual references in the articles.

We have established who quotes Winnicott. But whom does he quote? Does he, for instance, quote the work of Paula Heimann?

This query and similar ones can be tested easily. Go to the search tab again.

Enter Winnicott, D.W into the Author field and enter Paula Heimann into the search for words field:

We can see that Winnicott, D.W cites Heimann three times.

Now we can see if Heimann cites Winnicott, D.W.

Enter Paula Heimann into the Author field and enter Winnicott, D.W into the search for words field.

We can see that Heimann cites Winnicott, D.W four times:

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Who else wrote that year?

Heimann wrote her article on counter-transference, used earlier, in 1950. What else was going on at this time?

To see what other articles appeared in the volume of the journal in which Heimann was writing, first find Heimann's article using the Author search tab.

Once there, simply click on the red volume number of the International Journal - Volume 31 (under the journal's logo). You will get a list of all the papers in that volume.

You can now see the articles in the volume of the journal in which Heimann's article appeared.

Scroll down the Document Pane (using the scroll tab the right hand side) until you come to the paper On the Termination of Analysis by Annie Reich (it's on the second page). Click on the article:

Scroll down until you come to the following text making an interesting point of comparison in relation to countertransference.

Note: If you scroll down through the Document Pane a little more you see the original source page number 183, which you might find useful for citation purposes.

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What else was being published in all the Journals on PEP Web in 1950?

Go to Home and then again click on the Search Tab: Enter "on" in the first box and 1950 in the field labelled "Year". Click Search.

352 articles - the total number published that year in this database - will be displayed.

The papers can be browsed by clicking on the titles.

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What was said in book reviews or reports of dreams?

There are many other things that can be done using the search capabilities of PEP Web. For example, the search context can be specified to examine only book reviews or situations where the content of dreams has been reported.

To look at what has been said about a book in book reviews, for example, we can use the "article type" field and restrict the search to book reviews.

There are two reviews of this book by the French analyst Didier Anzieu. Try putting in the titles of other books and seeing what was said.

As well as reviews you can also look for other types of publications such as announcements or abstracts. Click on the arrow of the "Type" drop down menu and select the field you want to access.

To look at what has been said about the content of dreams, for example, we can use the "dreams" field and to restrict the search to those areas of the website which have been tagged as reporting dreams. (All results should be treated with caution as this tagging is not highly reliable).

Let us look for dreams about "falling".

38 dreams where the idea of falling occurred are reported.

Use Next Hit to access the next hit within the article and click on Next Document to look at the other dream examples.

As you can see, you can also click the radio buttons "Dialog" and "Reference" to help narrow down your search.

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More Refined Searching by Context

If we go back to our search on countertransference and enactment it will be recalled there were 578 articles where these two terms appeared in the same paragraph (within 25 words of each other).

To refine the search to a smaller number of key articles, let us think about a cluster of terms and concepts such as countertransference, enactment, analyst's feelings, interpretation, living out the (transference). At the same time we can make use of the logical operators "AND", "OR" and "NOT". Let us also use the "wild card method", where various symbols such as an asterisk or question mark are typically used to search for variations of words such as interpret, interpretation, interpreting etc., in order to capture the full expression of these terms and concepts.

Using the "Or" or "And" radio buttons are there for convenience. The "Or" finds one term and not another, whereas the "And" finds one term and a second term. The "Not" finds one term but not another.

But to further refine your search:

Type in the Search for Words and Phrases dialog box:

counter*tr* w/25 "liv* out" w/25 enact*

[We are requesting countertransference in its various possible spellings and enactment (in its varieties) to appear together within 25 words or some form of "living out" and countertransference in its various possible spellings.]

Note: You can cut and paste these words and then drop them into the "Search fore Words or Phrases in Context" dialog bar.

Click the Search Button and you will be astonished how quickly PEP Web achieves this search - searching over 37000 articles to find twenty core articles which when examined all discuss precisely what we are looking for:

Using the logical operation "Not" can also really narrow down your search: Now type in the search field the following:

To narrow your search further you can eliminate concepts you are not interested in. For example eliminating the concept countertransference (in all its spelling forms) will narrow down your results. Type in the search field the following:

Your screen should now look like this:

If you want to find publications that refer to one or more concepts OR another concept, you can use the logical operator "OR". For example:

Your screen should look like this:

As you can see this gives you 1000 results - which since the search engine has a limit of 1000 does not mean that is all there are!. In the results there are publications which include the concepts enact* and liv*out (in their various spellings) in one paragraph, as well as publications that include enact*, liv*out and counter* and also publications that just include the concept of countertransference. This result is less specific than one would want.

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Using the copy and paste commands

PEP Web allows you to highlight and copy text and images to the Clipboard as permitted by your Internet browser application (e.g., Internet Explorer in Microsoft Windows), using the browser's Save As feature. This feature is provided for your personal use of the product. For example, you may wish to copy information on a certain topic to an electronic file to make a research file (notes, lecture, draft paper) for your future reference. You may wish to print out an article to read at a later time when you are away from your computer.
The Copy feature allows you to quickly copy large sections of text within a document to other applications, such as a word processor. To copy, select a portion of the text and click the Copy command on your web browser's Edit menu (or Control C). Once the text has been copied to the clipboard, you can switch to another application and apply the copied text by choosing Paste from your application's Edit menu.
However, copyright law does not allow you, for example, to copy an article for commercial publication or for posting onto a computer website or bulletin board. These examples are illustrative, and are not meant to summarize applicable law.

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How to email a colleague your search results

Use the Copy command above but paste into your email application.

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