Patient and Professional Life
Lines
Drawing from Life illustrates some aspects of my work
as a medical psychotherapist. I trained as a psychiatrist and as a
psychoanalytic psychotherapist and see the integration of these in
functioning as a psychoanalytic psychiatrist.
I see patients for assessment and psychoanalytic
psychotherapy, and since 2000, I have offered a medical
psychotherapy consultation service to other professionals about
patients they are struggling with. From my own clinical work and
these applications of psychoanalytic thinking, I have become
convinced of the crucial place of creating spaces for professionals
to reflect on their counter-transference, the emotional impact of
their work on them, to enhance patient care.
Patient and professional life lines converge in the
work, both may be in need of a life line and one that can be
offered is in drawing from life with the aim of finding mutual
meaning.
Dr. James Johnston, Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy,
Leeds
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