Edwin Harari 2104 Ghost Busting: Re-introducing psychotherapy for the psychiatrist
Abstract
Objective: The purpose of this paper is to provide a clinically relevant historical and conceptual overview of psychotherapy as an introduction to a forthcoming series of papers on specific models of psychotherapy. The author offers a selective review of some key ideas in the history and practice of psychotherapy.
Conclusion: The principles of psychotherapy should inform all psychiatric practice, including the doctor– patient relationship, multidisciplinary teams caring for patients with complex or ‘treatment resistant’ problems, and patients who are non-compliant with psychotropic medication.
Keywords: psychotherapy, doctor–patient relationship, treatment resistance, psychotherapy and medication
Australasian Psychiatry 2014, Vol 22(5) 433–436 © The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
Australasian Psychiatry – Signposts http://www.apy.sagepub.com DOI: 10.1177/1039856214546673
Ghost Busting: re-introducing psychotherapy for the psychiatrist
Edwin Harari Consultant Psychiatrist, St. Vincent’s Hospital Area Mental Health Service, Fitzroy, VIC, Australia
Psychotherapy (‘healing the mind’) is a particular type of interpersonal influence, wherein one person, acknowledged by society as possessing relevant skills (the psychotherapist) seeks to change the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, behaviours, relationships or personality of a suffering other (the patient):
If one posits that the relation between doctor and patient has been critically wounded, how are we to understand whether, and on what basis, that relationship may be reasserted ? AI Tauber
The pedagogy for engaging hidden values and divided selves is the moral building of the clinician as a full developed human being. A Kleinman
I do not favour the way Descartes ontologically screwed up a reasonable search for mind-brain docking during the past four centuries yielding life-denying monstrosities like radical behaviourism and an emotionless information processing cognitivism… J Panksepp
The possibility of intersubjective knowledge offers a welcome relief from a forced choice between pure subjectivity (Descartes) and true objectivity (Kant). EM Hundert
The outcome of the game is to convert what would otherwise be a nameless trauma into a loss. J Lear
As a general rule throughout Asia, the more patriarchal the society, the more the Buddha looks like a woman: the more egalitarian the society, the more the Buddha looks like a man. L Shlain
Psychotherapists, especially, appreciate [that]… this painful ambivalence is as old as the ice-age, a hallmark of Cro-Magnon man, torn between his craving for consolation and his fear of revenge. J Cawte
Each of the above quotations may serve as a conceptual signpost or creative condensation of the argument each of the authors’ advances in their respective texts which bear on the nature, subject matter and practice of psychotherapy.
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References
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