The Psychiatric Interview

by Harry Stack Sullivan

Book Overview

This is a book for all those working in the field of psychiatric disorder. It will be invaluable to medical students and doctors training in general practice, emergency medicine and psychiatry. At a time when the assessment of psychiatric patients is the responsibility of a range of clinicians, The Psychiatric Interview will also be of assistance to clinical psychologists, social workers and psychiatric nurses. It will also have a place as a reference book for police and security officers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393005062
• ISBN13: 9780393005066
• Release Date: February 1970
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Great Read

This is a wonderful book that every psychologist should read. All of the topics that Sullivan discusses still apply to psychology today. This book gave me a great deal of insight about how to approach the interview and my patients. It was recommended to me by one of my mentors and I am glad he did.

A Classic that is Better than Most Modern Works

Harry Stack Sullivan's work deserves to be read widely, and is an extremely important antidote to the pharmaceutical-crazy approaches to mental health that are so dominant in the modern world. This book can teach the reader a great deal about how to deal with the dynamics of a therapeutic interview--and more importantly how to understand conversations in general! This approach to understanding communication fits well with Bateson's excellent analyses of the power-dynamics of conversations, and with Laing's and Minuchin's analyses of what happens in familial communications. I think this book should be a MUST-READ before any M.D. or therapist enters the interview room. Along with offering important practical guidance, it can help alert you-as-therapist to ways in which your own issues are inappropriately undermining the therapeutic exchange.