The Psychiatric Interview (The Norton Library)

Rating:
Summary: A Classic that is Better than Most Modern Works
Review: Harry Stack Sullivan's work deserves to be read widely, and is an extremely important antidote to the pharmaceutical-crazy approaches to mental health that are so dominant in the modern world. This book can teach the reader a great deal about how to deal with the dynamics of a therapeutic interview--and more importantly how to understand conversations in general! This approach to understanding communication fits well with Bateson's excellent analyses of the power-dynamics of conversations, and with Laing's and Minuchin's analyses of what happens in familial communications. I think this book should be a MUST-READ before any M.D. or therapist enters the interview room. Along with offering important practical guidance, it can help alert you-as-therapist to ways in which your own issues are inappropriately undermining the therapeutic exchange.