Helping the community is a challenge for all mental health professionals. Many of my colleagues wonder how we can join forces with community organizations to help the underserved. Our psychoanalytic skills are useful in one to one sessions, but on a broader level, they might also be useful to community mental health clinics, schools, and social service agencies. Father Boyle, https://shirahvollmermd.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/father-boyle/, is my inspiration. Developing relationships with people who have limited resources can be a game changer in their lives. Understanding the value of a therapeutic relationship can, theoretically, and practically in the case of Father Boyle, have a huge impact on vulnerable folks. This impact takes the form of giving people hope; people who had none at all. This hope is hope in themselves; the hope to change their own lives. Transformative relationships might be a better term than community psychoanalysis to impart how change happens. Psychoanalysts, as experts in the challenges of therapeutic relationships, are in a unique position to inspire and to teach volunteers, case workers, and clergy to help the community.
Today’s mental health clinics are focused on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT); a treatment which many say is “evidenced-based,” meaning that there are randomized controlled trials to demonstrate the efficacy. Although CBT is very useful, it does not substitute for the inspiration that a therapeutic relationship provides. Yet, money is tight; government which often hands out the money, wants to put their resources into something that shows efficacy. However, what if nothing demonstrates efficacy? What if CBT demonstrates results, but these results are short-term? Sometimes, intuition has to play a role; even in government funding. People dedicated to helping others, who know how to form a relationship with people in distress, is a good place to put resources. Transformative relationships; that is where we need to focus.
Shirah Vollmer MD 