All that glitters is not gold: The application of psychoanalytic principles to community mental health

Abstract

This special issue on community mental health focuses on the ways in which several innovative mental health programs across the United States have risen to the challenge of incorporating psychodynamic principles into their clinical practice. Contrasted with these domestic programs are reports from a number of countries in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East in which local clinicians describe how community mental health programs in their countries are tackling these issues. In this introduction, we emphasize factors common to the populations these authors serve, the organizational challenges they face, and the successes they achieve by way of their skill, creativity, and perseverance. We underscore the ways in which they articulate how psychoanalytic thinking, training, and practices have evolved in response to lessons learned and changing political, economic and cultural climates. We conclude that applied psychoanalysis, and particularly psychoanalysis applied to community mental health has, in some ways, been at the forefront of change in psychoanalytic practice in general. The modifications made by those in community mental health are viewed as necessary accommodations for both the communities served and for the psychoanalytic enterprise itself.