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.
My mentor in psychiatry and psychoanalysis was Dr. Lewis Hill. I call him my mentor because, while I had many teachers, Lewis was more than a conduit to learning; he was a facilitator to growth. Lewis combined in one person contradictory traits that I was familiar with since childhood and had spent years struggling to reconcile satisfactorily. With his shortcropped brown hair and somewhat stiff posture, Lewis could give an impression of a transplanted Prussian general. This side of him translated into a no-nonsense, uncompromising stance on the side of doing what was necessary for the safety, welfare, and recovery of our patients at Sheppard Pratt Hospital.
His other trait was his exquisite sensitivity to the patient's inner world as the patient perceived it, especially the patient's vulnerability to painful affect. At a time when psychotic patients were universally regarded as defending against murderous discharges of aggressive drive, Lewis emphasized that careful observation might reveal the patient's significant problem to be chronic shyness or repeated experiences of humiliation or a persistent failure to fulfill a desire to find a way to be close to someone. At a time when abstinence and neutrality were extolled as central to the pursuit of insight (Stone, 1961), Lewis believed that what an analyst communicated about his inner self and his therapeutic intent transcended technique as a factor in recovery (Hill, 1955).