Elvin V. Semrad (1909-1976): Experiencing the heart and core of psychotherapy training

Abstract

Elvin Semrad was among the most influential and beloved teachers of psychotherapy in his generation. His legacy as a clinician, teacher, and mentor is still felt today, even among those who never knew him directly. What and how he taught remains as relevant as ever in the psychotherapeutic care of troubled individuals. His was primarily a psychiatry of affects and bodily feelings, and he focused uncannily and empathically on the patient's experience. The basis of his rich, heartfelt, wise, and inimitable approach was not just classically psychoanalytic, or existential, or ego-oriented, or self-psychological, or interpersonal-relational, or even humanistic or adaptational. Rather, it was all of these in a uniquely "Semradian" integration geared toward elucidating patients' experience that had arrested them during their life course and their avoidance of "acknowledging, bearing, and putting into perspective" what they were up against. This paper describes who he was and gives a personal perspective on his influence - how and what he taught and why he had such an effect on those who knew him.