The Medical Model: Symptom clusters

• Grief Work-V by Polly Bloomberg-Fretter, 5/8/98
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    • Approaches to Treatment by Ginger Schenck, 6/2/98
      
      

I practice psychoanalytic psychotherapy and one of my supervisors told me that the DSM was set up in the medical model of describing disorders by symptom clusters. In this regard symptoms can often by treated briefly with cognitive and/or behavioral approaches more rapidly than psychodynamic approaches which generally treat from an underlying personality defect. She said she, for example, found that a fear of flying could be treated very rapidly where psychoanalytic psychotherapy might take 2 years. She has had clients who were treated with CBT simultaneously with her psychotherapy and get in an extra two years of flying. But I would be interested in our distinguished panel commenting on her observations

Norm

• Problem or pathogen? by Paul Salkovskis, 6/8/98