The psychotherapist's role in a large psychiatric institution

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A role in any human institution is a mixture of objective reality together with phantastical images from unconscious and defensive sources. I shall illustrate some of these roles in the mental hospital from my own experience; and I shall argue that the psychotherapist has a significant place in this unconscious phantasy system, which it is important for us, as psychoanalysts working in the National Health Service, to know about and to understand. I suggest, too, that these pressures act upon us all whether we work in large mental hospitals or elsewhere as psychotherapists. The theory of social defence systems is used as a framework for understanding the processes in our own institutions. This paper is an attempt to show how helpful this psychoanalytical theory of institutions is for our practice in the NHS.

This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit: