Psychodynamic Psychiatry in Clinical Practice
Maps psychodynamic theory onto the major psychiatric disorders.
The patient must be viewed simultaneously as a disturbed person and as a diseased central nervous system.
Gabbard sets out a working method for the psychiatrist who wants to treat the person and the diagnosis at the same time. The first half establishes principles: how to conduct a dynamically informed assessment, formulate a case, and plan treatment along the expressive to supportive continuum, using the clinician's own reactions as data. Pharmacology, group and family work, and inpatient treatment are folded into the same frame rather than set against it.
The second half proceeds through the DSM-5 categories, giving each disorder a psychodynamic reading placed beside its neurobiology: what the presentation defends against, how it surfaces in transference and countertransference, and what it asks of the treater. Coverage runs from the psychoses and mood disorders to the personality disorders, with newer sections on autism spectrum and on combined trauma and dissociative presentations.
The result gives the clinician language for formulation, for anticipating enactments, and for judging how much to interpret and how much to hold.
About the author
Glen Owens Gabbard
Glen O. Gabbard is an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, born in 1949. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and a training and supervising analyst at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies. His work centres on psychodynamic psychiatry, professional boundary violations, and the psychotherapies. He has authored or edited many books and papers, including texts on psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, physician health, and depictions of mental illness in film.
Details
- 1990
- American Psychiatric Publishing
- American Psychiatric Publishing, 5th ed. (2014), 2014
- 653
- 9781585624430