Word: patient
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...classical Freudian psychoanalysis, the patient, lying on the inevitable couch, meets with the analyst for an hour, three to five times a week. Whether the patient talks about problems, fears and dreams, or simply free associates?voicing any thoughts that come to mind?the theory is that his unconscious difficulties will gradually break through into conscious thought. The analyst is generally passive and silent, offering no advice and speaking only to prod the patient into uncovering more nuggets from the inner recesses of the mind. The key to the Freudian "cure" is transference?the analyst replaces some crucial figure...
From its inception, psychoanalysis has been plagued by an elitist image. Most patients are middle and upper class, and even today only 2% are nonwhite. Analysts say that the treatment works best for the YAVIS (Young, Adaptable, Verbal, Intelligent and Successful). It also helps to be W (Wealthy). A psychoanalytic hour (actually it is now usually 45 to 50 minutes) costs from $20 to $100, with the average at $50, or $12,000 a year for the five-times-a-week treatment recommended by Freud. As a concession to economic reality, most American psychoanalysts see patients only once or twice...
More rankling still is the recent perception of male psychiatrists as sexual exploiters of their women patients. Though such behavior is clearly a violation of the Freudian ethic, which forbids any social contact between patient and doctor, to say nothing of the Hippocratic oath, there is clearly some fire behind the smoke. In Florida alone, nine psychiatrists last year were charged with sexual misconduct during therapy; in a recent poll of 500 psychiatrists, a medical journal found that a surprising 19% said that they approved of doctor-patient sex under some circumstances. The intimate relationships in therapy obviously make both...
...community mental-health centers have their own headaches. Funding is short, and the goal of low-cost care is proving illusory. According to various estimates, each patient visit costs between $35 and $40, more than in private practice, for treatment that is generally of lower quality. Says Alan Stone, professor of law and psychiatry at Harvard: "Taking care of people well cannot be done in a less expensive way than just warehousing them, which was what we were doing before...
...effects. The stronger antipsychotic drugs like Thorazine are useful for handling schizophrenics, whose behavior is characterized by hallucinations and severely disordered thinking, as well as other forms of severe mental disorder. But while these chemicals produce a rapid return to normal, or at least socially acceptable behavior, in some patients, they also act as chemical restraints: they calm the schizophrenic but often turn him into little more than a zombie in the process. As Psychologist Steven Matthysse of the Mailman Research Center explains, while agitation and disordered thought diminish in the drugged patient, the drugs do very little to move...