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abstract This paper reviews the place of the therapeutic community in the mental health field, using a sociological framework to understand some key factors that have shaped the field and its response to this approach to therapy. The therapeutic community treatment method in mental health has been contested over the years. It has challenged conventional professional frameworks, it has dealt with a difficult client group, and it has been hostile to or at least awkward about establishing its evidence base. In this paper I reflect on the 'politics of evidence' in contested fields. I draw on the analysis of 'fields' from the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and the analysis of scientific knowledge from an area of the social study of science, 'actor-network theory'. I argue that evidence is not neutral in contested fields, and that the technology of trials is not balanced with a theoretically informed understanding of the phenomena under scrutiny (causality versus meaning). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ward community groups have been mostly lost from acute psychiatric in-patient settings in recent years with changes related to care in the community and altered therapeutic expectations. This paper outlines the re-introduction of ward community groups to such a setting and, by using the quantitative measure of patient complaints and qualitative observations, offers evidence for their usefulness as a therapeutic medium, beneficial to the acute psychiatric in-patient ward, and as a container for disturbed states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on "Reconsidering Schreber: Contemporary Perspectives," a study day held at the Severnside Institute for Psychotherapy in July 2005. Background on how the speakers reappraised Freud's paper "Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia" which was based on Schreber's "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness"; Highlights of the event.

Focuses on the process of selecting the papers published in the 20th anniversary issue of the journal "British Journal of Psychotherapy." List of articles published in the previous issues of the journal.