ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the practice a mish-mash of basic psychiatry and half-baked psychotherapy an antidepressant here, and anxiety management group there without clearly defined roles, limits or objectives. Losing the certainties artificial of a narrowly defines medical or psychotherapeutic approach. If people characterise psychiatry as the domain of adaptation, psychotherapy that of imagination, there is a sense in which psychiatry takes precedence over psychotherapy, in that the patient needs to be contained and capable of understanding before meaningful psychotherapy can begin. Contemporary mental health care needs to move from a split between the fixed and stereotyped roles of psychiatrist and psychotherapist to a more fluid relationship, yet one in which each side retains its identity striking a balance between containment and intervention, receptiveness and activity. Scientific advances in understanding the mechanisms underlying memory and the development of behaviour helps to reconcile what has hitherto been a seemingly unbridgeable gap.
