Am J Psychiatry 1977; 134:529-533
Copyright © 1977 by American Psychiatric Association
Psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy: conceptual lenses
JP Docherty, SR Marder, DP Van Kammen and SG Siris
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.
