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The Teaching of Psychotherapy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

Jacob E. Finesinger*
Affiliation:
Psychiatric Institute, University of Maryland, Baltimore

Extract

For the past twenty years we have been studying methods of teaching and their effectiveness in changing the behaviour of medical students and doctors. At the Massachusetts General Hospital our work was concerned primarily with teaching psychotherapy to medical students, residents and younger physicians. During these years we have practised and taught many kinds of psychotherapy, including situational therapy, relationship therapy such as catharsis, support, reassurance, suggestion and persuasion, and the various types of insight therapy from the verbalization and understanding of simple correlations to more extensive Freudian psychoanalysis. The patients we treated in Boston were primarily those with psychoneuroses and psychosomatic disturbances. In these groups of patients insight therapy was the method of choice. It was only when insight therapy was impracticable or too disturbing to the patient that other methods such as relationship therapy were used. During these years we used insight therapy whenever possible, often with limited effectiveness. The treatment for any given hospital admission required from 20 to 40 interviews, occasionally more. It was our practice to use the vis-à-vis interview method.

Type
Anglo-American Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1958 

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References

1. Finesinger, Jacob E., “Psychiatric Interviewing. I. Some Principles and Procedures in Insight Therapy”, Amer. J. Psychiat., 105, No. 3. September, 1948.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Finesinger, Jacob E. and Powdermaker, , Florence, , “Psychotherapeutic Interviewing Series” (films), Veterans Administration, 1949.Google Scholar
Part I: Introduction.Google Scholar
Part II: A Method of Procedure.Google Scholar
Part III: An Approach to Understanding Dynamics.Google Scholar
Part IV: Non-Verbal Communication.Google Scholar
3. Whitehead, A. N., The Aims of Education, 1949. New York: The New American Library. p. 166.Google Scholar
4. Reid, John R., and Finesinger, Jacob E., “Inference Testing in Psychotherapy”, Amer. J. Psychiat., 107, No. 12. June, 1951.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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