Training psychiatric teams to do family systems acute psychiatry

This article presents an account of a comprehensive eighteen‐day, multi‐team, multidisciplinary training approach to family systems inpatient acute psychiatry. It has been developed and tested as part of the SYMPA project (systems therapy in acute psychiatry), which aims to establish systemic case conceptualizations and interventions as routine practice in acute psychiatry. Content, didactic characteristics and specifications of this training are discussed. To illustrate the practical implementation of the training, specifically designed exercises are described and a clinical case is included. The article concludes by presenting first results of the research on implementation indicating that the training had a significant impact on the quantity and quality of conversations with patients.     

David and Goliath: What If He Loses?

ABSTRACT

Infant’s volition has not been explored in healthy development. Our research conducted on the environmental response to infant’s initiatives (Hoffmann, Popbla, and Duhalde, 1998) shows that maternal attitude has a direct correlation with successful development of initiatives in infants aged 4 to 12 months, having implications for the capacities of infants to unfold as much as endowments allow. The opposite also is true. Infants who are more thwarted in the development of their potential initiatives show greater reactivity and conflict in early relationships with the caregiver, impacting the development of a healthy self. These claims will be discussed with proposals made in recent decades by some authors who have focused on the coming together of a self in the first year of life. The ramifications of this early start in one’s life can be credited to Lou Sander, whom we honor in this issue. Sander was gifted with a capacity to see with a “relational eye” and to state it in everyday language, while simultaneously using very sophisticated inventions to validate his assumptions. This work has made it possible to solve the riddle of the David and Goliath story that is part of the miracle of life over death, of love over hate, of health over sickness, which makes (most) mothers able to become good enough or whatever defines a progressive meeting between the infant’s doings with the doings of mothers.     

Dispensary treatment of endogenous psychoses from the viewpoint of the psychiatrist in ambulatory care

Reviewing the results of the observation of 72 patients suffering from endogenic psychoses during a period of 11 years the author tries to demonstrate the advantages of a basis-near, i.e. near to the places of living and employment, therapy for psychically sick persons. The necessity of long-term therapy is emphasized.