Helping a Clinic Patient Modify Self-destructive Thinking.

Nowadays a significant amount of writing related to the treatment of emotionally troubled persons is devoted to examining the broad base of human experience. On this count the existentialist writers and professional people have enlarged the understanding of the range and scope of human potentialities and capacities. Thus, many members of the helping profession have not been satisfied merely to refine their therapeutic techniques, or to accumulate psychodynamic information, they are now addressing themselves to an understanding of the human condition. During recent employment in a psychiatric outpatient clinic, the worker worked with a 31 year old single man on a weekly interview basis over an eight-month period. The patient had two previous experiences with therapy in clinic settings that, according to him, had not been helpful. Specific innovations in therapy seemed called for because of the nature, chronicity, and extent of the patient's problems, the type of defenses he employed, his capacities and strivings, and the failure of more traditional psychotherapeutic methods.