Psychiatry Elective Course Description

David Mintz, MD

Contact: Kathleen Young
413-931-5230

Elective Description: The Austen Riggs Center, specializing in the care of patients who have been labeled as “treatment-resistant,” has sustained a primary commitment to psychodynamic approaches which help troubled individuals to develop personal authority and take responsibility for their lives. Intensive individual psychotherapy is integrated with pharmacologic, group, family, and milieu therapies. The elective in psychodynamic psychiatry is designed to provide interested medical students with an understanding for how developmental issues and the patient’s life historical context affect not only individual psychology, but also group life, and other aspects of psychiatric practice, such as medication responsiveness. Students have the opportunity for full engagement with the work of the Center, meeting weekly with a staff mentor and the clerkship director. They will attend staff and team meetings, daily community meetings for patients and staff, core conferences, psychological testing seminars, individual psychotherapy supervision, weekly dietetics and other staff groups. Students will begin to learn about the impact of unconscious dynamics, the development and importance of transference and countertransference, technical issues in psychotherapy and group dynamics. The Elective is largely observation and experiential; formal individual contact with patients will be limited.

Please complete the application for this elective here.