Title: Crisis at Adolescence: Object Relations Therapy with the Family
Abstract: Every human being ought to be sentenced monthly, to review-for publication in one's local paper-a book about a topic he or she stands against or abhors. I bet you my Managed Care membership card that it will cut half of the world's nonsense and make utopia more realizable and realisticallydesignable. Unlike John Updike's view ofliterary criticism as hugging the shore-meaning that critics are usually shrill, mean-tempered, cajonesless Monday morning quarterbacks-I take the challenge of book reviewing very seriously. My paradigm mirrors Vaclav Havel's reverence of the potential nuclear, radioactive power of a word especially when one is forced to examine where one stands and what one stands for as one examines where one thinks another stands and what that other person stands for. This is a cold, drizzling November morning of the American psychiatric soul. An atmosphere of cynicism and hopelessness grips our hearts as we see our autonomy to practice our profession being ripped from our hands by managed care groups who make us justify our diagnoses and treatment plans in rigid, prefabbed, multiple-choice questionnaire check boxes. In my neck of the woods, only one or two of us practice individual or family psychotherapy. Why? We are not supposed to. It is not economically feasible. Not only that, there is an aura of psychotherapeutic nihilism that has made the majority of us into pill-pushers and biological psychiatrists. Most psychiatrists nowadays are not happy campers. Collegiality is as rare as a house call. We are like adolescents in crisis-and this is what this book is about. Of the 11 or so nuances of the word doctor, one is as a fresh sea breeze that sweeps through a musty room. This book certainly doctored me in that sense. Also, in an aleatory way. For it forced me to identify for myself who I thought I was and was for. Coming from an almost mythical kingdom called T he Tavistock, in England, Sally Box and her 11 colleagues sally forth into our living rooms and reintroduce us to our old selves. And it feels good. Lest I forget, Susan Carvallo (History of Family Therapy) pins a Hello, I am . . . badge on me saying that I am, indeed, a conductor-psychodynamic-directive therapist.
Publication Year: 1995
Publication Date: 1995-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 14
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