ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the best of both worlds: combining and balancing the world of intellectual disability psychiatry with psychodynamic thinking and practice. Whilst the authors at Hertfordshire Loss and Bereavement psychodynamic psychotherapy service are trying to bridge the gap in a small way by offering psychotherapy placements to psychiatric trainees who are not specialising in intellectual disability psychiatry, they are still met with stigma and ignorance. The art of psychiatry can be boiled down to interview skills for eliciting symptoms and then clustering symptoms together and making a diagnosis. A trainee in psychiatry is an already-qualified doctor. Trainees find the lack of specific instructions before starting psychodynamic therapy difficult. More recent research explores outcomes of therapeutic interventions, including psychodynamic and psychoanalytic approaches, for people with intellectual disabilities. Valerie would often go out of her way to explain her view of therapy, and to set out clearly the aims and processes of group therapy for people with intellectual disability.
