ABSTRACT
In Chapter 6, I note that communication and understanding between psychoanalysts and physicians often are suboptimal. Few physicians, including psychiatrists, really understand what psychoanalysts do, what psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy offer their patients, and which of their patients are likely to benefit from these treatments. Physicians sometimes expect too much from psychoanalysts or too little. Psychoanalysts have the potential to offer physicians assistance in many facets of medical care. They can provide a psychodynamic understanding of unconscious factors influencing not only the patient’s behavior, but also that of medical and allied staff on psychiatric and other inpatient units. The latter may be important when a patient, “psychiatric” or otherwise, presents difficulties in management. The difficulty may include stirring up dissension among medical and non-medical staff on the inpatient unit, which, if not addressed, can perpetuate the difficulties they are having with the patient, as well as resulting in disharmony amongst staff that can become very destructive. The latter issue is covered in detail in Chapters 14 and 15.
