Kirjahaku

This five-session seminar, organized during 1946-47 for the psychiatric residents at Sheppard-Pratt, specifically covered the case of a young male schizophrenic who was being treated by Dr. Robert Kvarnes, then a participating resident. Each session included the case presentation by Dr. Kvarnes, the posing of a discussion question by Sullivan, his exchanges with the participants, and his extended closing comments on major clinical issues. The publication of this seminar provides a demonstration of Sullivan at work as a teacher. His unusual sensitivity to young male schizophrenics and his delicacy in perceiving and reacting to anxiety in therapeutic interactions are reflected in the seminar. The contemporary discussions, conducted by Dr. Kvarnes, now director of the Washington School of Psychiatry, Washington, D.C., follow each of the original seminar sessions, consider the seminar content itself, and show the differences that twenty-five years have made in the various trends in therapy and in salient social programs. Also included is additional historical material about the seminar the participants, and Sullivan.

This is a book for all those working in the field of psychiatric disorder. It will be invaluable to medical students and doctors training in general practice, emergency medicine and psychiatry. At a time when the assessment of psychiatric patients is the responsibility of a range of clinicians, The Psychiatric Interview will also be of assistance to clinical psychologists, social workers and psychiatric nurses. It will also have a place as a reference book for police and security officers.

The chapters in this book, focusing on Sullivan’s contributions to American social science, deal with the implications for psychiatry of the major social questions that emerged in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Some of the topics are propaganda and censorship; the illusion of personal individuality; and the meaning of anxiety.

Amongst clinicians, Sullivan is probably best known for his early work with schizophrenics at the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland. Yet this fame has been largely legendary, since the only full record of this work is found scattered through various professional journals and monographs published more than twenty-five years ago and in an unpublished book written in the thirties, Personal Psychopathology. In this present book of selected papers, the author has tried to reconstruct this work by bringing together what he considers to be the most crucial of these papers.