You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
To the Editors: It takes considerable courage or utter security to expose tentative, new modes of approach for one's colleagues' certain criticisms, particularly when, as with Dr.
Rogawski's use of conjoint interviews, this represents a departure from the usual parameters of psychoanalysis.
As a contributor to The Forum, an open-minded innovator must welcome the challenges thrown at him when readers' own critical faculties are stimulated. So we have here a partial safeguard against embracing too rapidly those departures which might require further shoring-up to be on sound bases or which might introduce more problems than they solve. On the other hand, we also have a much-needed antidote to the tendency to regard methodology in a ritualistic fashion and to see any modification from previous forms as evidence of heresy. The panorama of views enables one to gain perspective both on the conservative and the adventuresome in the profession—and in oneself.
If psychoanalysis is to be viable, in theory and in practice, it must not only be open to, but must encompass, findings from related fields. Among the most important studies of recent years have been those which shed new light on the family as it contributes both to pathology and to health; it is evident that analysts are making use of these additions to our knowledge, and in many ways. I particularly applaud Dr. Grotjahn's comment that each therapist must be free to develop his own “style.” There is nothing so stifling to creativity as the presumption that there is but one way to do psychotherapy.
Therapists differ—and Dr. Rogawski can, out of his own personality and particular experiences, comfortably and successfully use conjoint interviews in the finishing phase. Perhaps others would not find themselves at ease with this and should not, therefore, do it.
Among the experiences which encouraged Dr. Rogawski to dare “bringing the patient's reality to the treatment” were perhaps his extensive consultations with social w