ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Minerva Psichiatrica 2006 March;47(1):103-12

Copyright © 2006 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: Italian

Psychiatrist’s psychodynamic training in the neuroscience era

Fassino S., Abbate Daga G.

Centro Pilota Regionale per i Disturbi del Comportamento Alimentare Struttura Complessa Universitaria di Psichiatria ASO San Giovanni Battista di Torino, Torino

Aim. The progress in neurosciences is modifying the role of the psychiatrist, with a new need to define his identity. On one hand, the figure of the psychiatrist seems destined to an overspecialization that will divide the competences into neurobiological, medical, psychotherapeutic and social. On the other hand, the neurobiological knowledge, the prescription of drugs, the right diagnostic category according to the DSM-IV, the detailed rehabilitative programming do not satisfy all the needs of a dialogic meeting with the patient, in order to speak with him. Beyond the correct psychopharmacological prescription, the patient asks for being listened and the meeting with the therapist is part of the treatment: the personality’s factors of both concur to transform the pharmacological effect in therapeutic effect. So, for a right professional activity the psychiatrist needs knowledges and complex competences referring to different models of mind. The aim of this study is a survey of the international literature over a 5-year period (1999-2004) on the psychotherapeutic training of the psychiatrist.
Methods. The recent scientific acquisitions on the psychiatrist’s training published in the scientific literature between 1999 and 2004 are reviewed.
Results. On the basis of the results obtained, the opportunities of a wide psychodynamic training which subdivides the different therapeutic elements in an ad personam project for the patient are discussed: this will significantly increase the psychiatrist’s training too. Attention is paid also to the decodification of the therapist’s livings regarding his own profession and the patient. Finally, some theoretical and practical difficulties of the young colleagues’ psychodynamic training are described in the debate currently discussed by the European and American postgraduated schools.
Conclusion. The psychodynamic training, to self-knowledge and to the use of theoretical and technical knowledges and competences, and to the relational capacity, is neessary. Only in this way the psychiatrist develops the peculiar professional identity of physician in the role of manager. This is requested by the new socio-cultural, organizational and scientific transformations of psychiatry in the regard of strategical biopsychosocial approach.