Of the many difficulties in maintaining an integration of
psychotherapeutic and pharmacotherapeutic treatment, one of the most
important is "the problem of bimodal relatedness", that is, the distinction
between relating to the patient as a diseased organ or object of study and
as a disturbed person. The authors identify the forces that act to
inappropriately emphasize one mode or the other and discuss major
difficulties that arise because of failure to maintain a bimodal
relatedness. In a setting of combined therapy, maintaining and safeguarding
the optimal relationship of collaborative subject-subject relatedness can
prevent the emergence of problem destructive to effective psychiatric
treatment and research.
Abstract Teaser