IF A PSYCHIATRIST MUST BE A PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIST: NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCUSSION

This article presents modern discoveries in neurobiology and neurophysiology that have direct relevance to understanding the processes of the client in psychotherapy. The materials explain the links between communication processes unfolding in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy and changes in neuronal networks that determine all features of individual mental functioning, including neuronal correlates of psychological treatment of client’s pathological ways of understanding reality and adapt to it.

The psychiatrists (irrespectively of the fact if they have narrow biological or wider psychotherapy orientation) should possess basic psychotherapy skills, so that fluently contact with patients, understanding their experience with greater differentiation, which if necessary for adequate diagnosing and therapy.

Psychopharmacotherapy and psychotherapy affect the same neurophysiologic systems, and can be therefore considered as interconnecting, and sometimes changing each other methods of treatment. The “psychotherapeutic position” of psychiatrists as a rule allows to escape the unnecessary confrontations with patient and making trust interrelations, which can become the basis of successful treatment.

Integration of biologic, neurobiologic and psychotherapy education from this standpoint looks expedient and inevitable in future. Biology and psychology of psychical processes, motivation system, natural integration of experience must become interconnecting disciplines in the trade education of medical workers, psychotherapists and psychologists.