The Challenge of the Community Mental Health Movement to Psychoanalysis
ROBERT S. WALLERSTEIN M.D.1
1 Chief, department of psychiatry, Mount Zion Hospital and Medical Center, 1600 Divisadero Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94115
There is real danger today that community mental health programs will grow up apart from and conceptually antithetical to psychodynamic thinking. The author traces the unfortunate consequences should such a separation ensue. Rather than doing away with the need for individually oriented treatment, the proper development of a community mental health program actually generates an increased pressure for individual psychiatric care and psychotherapy. The specific enlargements of the usual purview of psychiatric practice brought about by a commitment to the community mental health concept are discussed within this framework.
