Application of Pao's Theories to a Case Study of the Use and Misuse of Medication

Ping nie pao served as Director of Psychotherapy at Chestnut Lodge for 14 years, a position of leadership held previously by Otto Will and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Because his unassuming style of leadership was more to convey his belief about what the essence of the work was all about by his empathic “being there” in his interactions with the staff as well as with the patients, it was not until his book was published shortly before his death, that we at the Lodge fully appreciated the impact of his contribution. For those of us who had worked with him, Pao's book (1979) filled a gap in our understanding of how he operated clinically. Even more important, by comprehensively pulling together the significant, disparate, fragmentary and often clinically irrelevant contributions of other psychoanalytic writers, Pao provided the framework for a cohesive clinical model of diagnosis and treatment.

Over the course of Pao's tenure, one of the main controversies that our hospital has struggled with is the proper role of psychoactive medication. Though Pao's position on this changed over the years and, in fact, from case to case as clinical needs dictated, it was largely through his clinical sensitivity to doing what was best under diverse circumstances that the Lodge gradually began to shift from totally opposing the use of drugs to attempting to find a