Læknablaðið - 01.06.1961, Page 34

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LÆKNABLAÐIÐ
^JJarotd ^JJefm
PROGNOSIS S\
PSYCIIOTIIERAPY
I want to thank you for in-
viting me to be with you and
for the privilege of talking to
you. In have decided to discuss
prognosis in psycho.therapy he-
cause 1) it is a problem with
which daily we are all confront-
ed; 2) it is a problem with
which therapists must con-
stantly concern themselves
when dealing with the mentally
ill, from the mildest to the
severest forms of neurosis
and psycliosis; 3) I wanted
to focus my talk on a topic from
which you might take some-
thing away with you tliat might
be of help to you in your daily
f--------------------------------\
Harold Kelman, Yale, B.S.,
1927; Harvard, M.D., 1931; Col-
umbia, D. Md. Sc., 1938; Diplo-
mate of the American Board of
Neurology and Psychiatry; Fel-
low, American Psyciatric Asso-
ciation and Academy of Psycho-
analysis; Dean, American Insti-
tute for Psychoanalysis; Editor,
American Journal of Psycho-
analysis. This paper was read
on September 10, 1960 before
the Medical Society of Reykja-
vík at the University of Iceland,
Reykjavík, Iceland.
.__________________________________
work with patients; 4) also I
feel that therapists of longer
experience have a responsihilitv
to communicate something of
what they have learned from
follow-up studies; 5) finally,
discussing prognosis in psycho-
therapy can he an effective way
of showing the intimate rela-
tionships of theory, tlierapy and
concrete clinical experience.
Psychiatrj', which is psycho-
logcal medicine, has borrowed
the term prognosis from physi-
cal medicine. In the latter,
prognosis refers to expectalions
regarding relief of svmptoms
and amelioration or cure of dis-
ease entities. More recently the
concept „cure“ is being regard-
ed as one having limited use-
fulness and duhious validity.
I feel it is more accurate to say
that after physical treament, a
person is about as physically
well as he was before the pliysi-
cal symptoms had become mani-
fest. More advanced thinkers in
medicine now realise, parti-
cularly since tlie work of Hans
Selye1) and Harold Wolff2) on
stress, that more suhtle mani-
festations of stress still remain