Introduction of Family Therapy into Child Psychiatry Training: Two Styles of Change

Abstract

Prior to 1967, I was based at the National Institute of Mental Health for 15 years, and was involved in psychoanalytically-oriented adult psychiatry, child development studies, and family therapy. During the decade following 1967, I spent five years each at two teaching hospitals in New York City* and at Rochester, New York.** At each of these hospitals, a new family training program was introduced where there had been none previously. Finally, in 1978, I returned to Washington and, for the third time, was asked to introduce family therapy into an ongoing child psychiatry fellowship program at Georgetown University Medical Center. In this paper, I will take the opportunity to reflect upon these three experiences. They illustrate two contrasting styles of introducing family therapy training into training programs in psychiatry, programs which had previously concentrated primarily upon individual diagnosis and therapy.