Building a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Practice Through Collaborations with Primary Care Physicians

Primary care physicians (PCPs) represent an important, and largely untapped, source of referrals for psychoanalysts. Other mental health professionals have built successful relationships with PCPs by adapting their interventions to the rushed, medicalized world of primary care by making treatments short-term and symptom-focused. In contrast, the present article describes a model of collaboration between psychoanalysts and PCPs that does not require a similar compromise of psychoanalytic treatment methods or values. The collaboration is built on the analyst being user friendly to the PCP by being: responsive (return PCP and patient calls the same day), relevant (do not minimize the importance of symptom relief), and responsible (for all referrals received, even if some patients are eventually referred to another clinician). PCPs benefit in this collaboration in that they get help with meeting patient needs. Primary care patients benefit in that they get effective treatment from psychoanalytic psychotherapists who are skilled in listening, understanding and empathizing. Finally, the psychoanalyst benefits from having the opportunity to help an interesting and diverse group of patients using psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.