Carl A. Whitaker

On teaching psychotherapy via consultation and cotherapy

In this article Dr. Whitaker presents his basic assumptions about teaching psychotherapy. He discusses his expectations of himself and his trainees in the teaching relationship and how he attempts to empower the trainee in his/her professional growth. Following this, Dr. Garfield joins Dr. Whitaker in a dialogue about consultation and cotherapy.

Contrasting child psychiatry and family therapy

This paper contrasts child psychiatry as a health care discipline with family therapy as a diagnostic and treatment method. Family therapy limits itself to the family system level, while child psychiatry encompasses multiple system levels from the organ, individual, family, and organizational levels to society

Sex, Love, and the Committed Relationship.

Abstract “We may discover someday how the three factors that we are discussing covary with each other during early life patterns and midlife experiences and during old age. Why at some periods do all three seem to summate into a marvelous suprasystem whole, and why do they then fragment and maybe resummate?“

Co-therapy with Families

The practitioner of psychotherapy needs to balance the steady pressure between fulfilling the community’s expectations, providing patients with an opportunity for growth, and keeping himself alive and creative. Co-therapy teaming has been vital in helping us to maintain a dynamic equilibrium between these three vectors. The term co-therapy denotes a number of different arrangements. Chiefly, it is the way that professional psychotherapists avoid, consciously or unconsciously, isolation. We use three methods of co-therapy: 1. The commonest type of arrangement and the focus of this paper is the professional and/or symbolic marriage of two therapists who intend to be present at all or most of the interviews. 2. Use of a consultant is another model. The therapist may invite another colleague in for a single or intermittent visit. The patient also may go off to see the consultant without the therapist (a visit to grandmother). 3. Another co-therapy model pictures a group of colleagues who meet on a regular basis to interview a family or discuss one or more treatment cases. The group may prefer a long-distance consultation with a speaker phone.