From Therapeutic to Didactic Communities

We have developed eclectic “Intensive Dynamic Brief Group Therapy’’ programs over the last 37 years in a dozen different care units (short-stay units in general hospitals, crisis centers and day units) in Spain and in Switzerland with an orientation toward the so called “Therapeutic Communities”. In the last 20 years, the programs have become less psychodynamic and less democratic –somewhat ‘‘decaffeinated,’’ in fact. This, however, does not mean they are less efficient as this book tries to demonstrate. On the other hand, our experience over the years has shown the negative effects of the “caffeine” administered by certain lines of psychoanalytic action and ‘‘pseudo-democratic’’ environments. Nowadays, when the leadership of the institutions changes, the programs very likely loose their freshness in favor of more traditional biological interventions. This is why this has been very important to maintain the group training programs we organize for the personnel. They constitute a kind of ‘‘Didactic communities’, assuring in the maintenance of the therapeutic ideology among the professionals.