How Senior Psychodynamic Psychiatrists Regard Retirement.

The variety of personal experiences and attitudes about professional work among psychodynamic psychiatrists who have attained retirement age are explored through semi-structured interviews. Of 21 members of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry interviewed, 6 report fulltime engagement in professional activity, 10 partial reduction, and 5 full retirement from practice. Through direct quotations from the respondents' interviews several matters are considered including the concept of retirement, structural changes in practice, health concerns, dream experience, spirituality and matters of legacy, how others have influenced attitudes toward continued work, and how fears of retirement are manifest among those currently in practice.

The Spectrum of Psychoanalytic Therapies: For the Person Behind the Diagnosis.

Therapies based on psychoanalytic theory and practice are individualized to the unique needs of each patient. They are best viewed on a continuum, a spectrum of approaches that are modulated according to the difficulties and the character structure of each person as they manifest themselves at that moment in the person's history. As people change over the course of treatment, the treatment modality may evolve accordingly.

A Video-conferencing Peer Consultation Group for Psychotherapy by Early-Career Psychiatrists.

To enhance the further development of psychodynamic psychotherapy skills in early-career psychiatrists (ECPs), the author describes a project being initiated by the American College of Psychoanalysts. The format will be biweekly peer consultation groups in which an experienced psychoanalyst will participate. The focus will be on actual case experiences of the ECPs, drawn from their work with any patient with whom psychotherapy skills are being used.

An open letter to early-career psychiatrists.

The author addresses early-career psychiatrists (ECPs) and graduating trainees about the challenges they will face in preserving the psychotherapeutic aspect of their professional identity during the coming years. Rapidly changing health care systems, high demand for services, conflicting paradigms for treatment, inadequate compensation for psychotherapy, disruptive third-party payers, bureaucratic demands, ECPs' own educational debts, and personal and family needs-all present the potential for stressful internal conflicts and difficult choices. However, ECPs are a scarce commodity.

Psyche--the meeting of mind and soul: current psychoanalytic views on the mental representation of god.

The author presents an overview of two contemporary, related psychoanalytic perspectives on religious phenomena. Based on data from systematic interviews, Ana-Maria Rizzuto explores the way the human mind forms the idea of God as it evolves through the various stages of childhood and adult development. The object-representation of God is greatly influenced by the mental representations of mother, father, and other important adults in the child's life.