Shrink: On Becoming a Psychotherapist

by Fierman, Louis B.

• ISBN13: 9781577331834
• ISBN10: 1577331834
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-07-01
• Publisher: BLUE DOLPHIN PUBLISHING INC

Summary

Endorsements "This book is about a spirit of love for what is alive, be it people, animals, nature; a love for creation of which we are part. It is about caring for patients, aiming at intimate communications free of judgments and directives, and establishing creative therapeutic communities. This motivating spirit is apparent throughout this modest autobiography. Our psychiatric profession has lost spirit and heart. Fierman shows us that with loving care and creative imagination we can revitalize our work and our lives." Marianne Horney Eckardt, M.D. (former president of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry) "This book pursues the author's life theme, 'the therapist is the therapy.' It does so through an autobiographical account emphasizing the life events leading to his emergence as a committed as well as gifted psychotherapist." Eugene B. Brody, M.A., M.D., D.Sc. (hon.) Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry Emeritus, University of Maryland, Senior Consultant, Past President and Past Secretary General, World Federation for Mental Health "This book is a fascinating odyssey of a maverick psychiatrist who thinks 'outside the box' of conventional psychiatric practice. Dr. Fierman's autobiographic account of his journey is filled with the richness and complexities of life experiences that influenced his thinking and perspectives. His crowning achievement was the creation of a therapeutic community at Elmcrest Hospital where he served as medical director. Braving the traditional mental health establishment he expanded the healing context of the patients by designating all staff members and employees of the hospital as 'co-therapists' and requiring them to attend weekly communal meetings with patients and their families. This loosening of hierarchal boundaries led to dramatically different interchanges and experiences that paved the way for recovery. Hopefully, the ideas Dr. Fierman sets forth in this book will be carried on in other psychiatric settings by like-minded idealists who share his humanistic vision of mental health." Peggy Papp, Director of Depression Project, Ackerman Family Institute "This book is part autobiography, part memoir and part informal pedagogy. It is a story of a poor immigrant's son's journey of becoming a doctor, a kaiserian 'nondirective' psychiatrist/psychotherapist and eventually a hospital CEO. It is a circuitous journey, full of levity and paths and a story full of warmth and respect for the human spirit in all of us. It is a story both 'up front and personal' but also reflective and generative in its inquiry into the restlessness of the human spirit. It is also a book which attests to the power of 'communicative-intimacy' and to the power of effective talk therapy - a power, sadly, much in decline in present-day psychiatry. Reading this book will help anyone restore his/her faith in the power of effective communication." Al Herzog, M.D., Medical Director, Professional Intensive Outpatient Program, Institute of Living; Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Author Biography

Author of Freeing the Human Spirit and "Shrink" Louis B. Fierman, M.D., is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. After completing a rotating internship at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, he entered active duty in the Army and was assigned to Military Government in occupied Japan.Returning to civilian life in the U.S. in 1949, he entered residency training in internal medicine at Yale, switching to psychiatry with the encouragement of his psychologist wife. He was appointed Chief Resident at both the Yale Psychiatric Institute and the Yale-New Haven Hospital Psychiatric Service, has taught psychotherapy and remains on the clinical faculty of the Yale School of Medicine. He entered psychoanalysis with Hellmuth Kaiser, a psychoanalyst who had broken with traditional and orthodox psychoanalysis to devise a new and more effective psychotherapy. After Kaiser's death, Dr. Fierman published Effective Psychotherapy, an anthology of Kaiser's works.Dr. Fierman has been President of the Connecticut Psychiatric Society, Chief of the Psychiatric Service at the West Haven Veterans Administration Medical Center, Medical Director of Elmcrest Psychiatric Institute and as Medical Director of Psychotherapy Associates, a private practice group in New Haven, Connecticut. He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.Now retired, Dr. Fierman has returned to his childhood interest in classical music and plays the French horn in two local symphony orchestras.