Fifty Years of Change: A Shared Journey.

The author shares a personal account of 50 years of experience practicing psychodynamic psychiatry and psychoanalysis after migrating from Argentina to the United States. Her career developed in parallel as a clinician and as an academic psychiatrist, with leadership roles in the American Psychiatric Association, the Association of Women Psychiatrists, and the American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis. After describing what constitutes the essence, substance, and form of psychoanalysis, she reviews the historic shift within psychoanalysis in the United States from intrapsychic dyadic practice with selected patients to the application of psychodynamic concepts to everyday psychiatric care of patients with complex morbidities in multiple clinical settings.

Intermittent Treatment with the Psychodynamic Psychiatrist: A Patient-Centered Approach.

This study examines the experiences of patients in treatment with psychodynamic psychiatrists on an intermittent basis following an initial brief period of intensive psychotherapy and stabilization. Patients with non-psychotic disorders who received intermittent treatment answered a web-based questionnaire describing the usefulness of various supportive, cognitive-behavioral, and psychodynamic interventions. Forty-eight out of 58 patients invited to participate completed the survey (83% response rate).

The interminable patient: a case history.

The author, a psychoanalyst with over 30 years in practice, has been committed when possible to conducting psychodynamic treatments of less than three years duration with a frequency of sessions of once a week. These have been the majority of her cases. The case presented, though, is one of a small number where the author has conducted psychodynamic treatment for over ten years' duration.

Contemporary practice patterns of dynamic psychiatrists--survey results.

Unlabelled: The authors examine the practice characteristics of dynamic psychiatrists, including the combined use of medication and psychotherapy, and adherence by self-report to psychodynamic, supportive, and cognitive behavioral therapy theoretical principles and techniques.

Method: Survey of 555 members of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry conducted in 2009.

Results: 24.

The dynamic psychiatrist: internist of the mind.

Abstract As dynamic psychiatrists our main clinical focus is to understand patients' symptoms and character structure through the exploration of their past and present experiences. This occurs within the context of their biopsychosocial environment. We work with tools such as free association, interpretation of transference distortions, and resistance to retrieving unconscious experiences.

Women psychiatrists: personal and professional choices--a survey.

Objective: A survey of female psychiatrists' personal and professional choices, their stress levels related to these choices, and their overall personal and professional satisfaction was conducted.

Method: Members of the Association of Women Psychiatrists residing in the U.S.

Personal disclosure revisited.

In this paper personal disclosure is defined as a conscious verbal presentation to the patient by the therapist of a personal vignette accompanied by the appropriate dynamic formulation and resolution of a given personal area of conflict. It is conceptualized within theoretical formulations which consider the therapeutic relationship a dyad, where the reality of the patient and the reality of the therapist influence each other, providing the matrix through which the resolution of the patient's past life experiences takes place in the context of this new interpersonal experience. It is specifically differentiated from a boundary violation, because the personal disclosure is brought to the patient's interactional awareness not for gratification of the therapist's sexual or narcissistic needs, but to provoke a response in the patient's conceptualization of a phenomenon being presented in the session and to actively influence the intersubjective field.

Benefits of long-term group therapy for disadvantaged Hispanic outpatients.

The authors describe a long-term group therapy program that has been successful in helping Hispanic women cope with adverse social and economic conditions and with a male-dominated culture. The group members explore conflicts presented by traditional roles of men and women in Hispanic culture and the issues of acculturation, family conflicts, children's performance, and violence, crime, and drug use in the community. Therapists' use of role modeling and didactic discussion encourages group members to share and examine their feelings, to provide insight into other members' feelings, and to slowly change their behavior.

Enhancing medication compliance in coffee groups.

In an adult outpatient department of a hospital serving a severely disadvantaged population, coffee groups have become an effective means of treating chronic, treatment-resistant patients and reinforcing their compliance with medication regimens. In dealing with the patients, many of whom have problems communicating needs and information, the therapists have developed such approaches as using concrete language, recognizing that many patients use medication transactions to reflect dissatisfaction with changes in group routine, anticipating common problems related to medication, and at times accepting patients' idiosyncratic chemotherapeutic preferences. Important elements of the coffee groups are the caring attitude of the co-therapists, a nonpressured atmosphere, and the presence of a familiar peer group.

"Coffee groups": a nine-year follow-up study.

The authors present a 9-year follow-up study of 76 chronically ill psychiatric patients treated in "coffee groups," a maintenance treatment approach first described in a pilot study in 1976. Their findings show a significant drop in rehospitalization rates for chronic schizophrenic patients after they had started to attend the group, despite irregular patterns of participation and attendance. There was a leveling off of measurable change in psychosocial functioning in contrast to earlier optimistic reports.