title: [The myth of the good samaritan in psychiatry--thoughts prompted by a controversy].
abstract: This article reflects on psychotherapeutic and sociotherapeutic components contained in clinical psychiatric work, seen under the aspect of coping with resistance and hostility experienced by the psychiatrist during his work both from his environment and his patients. Any self-aggrandisement on the part of the therapist, if he begins to identify himself with the image of the Good Samaritan, is nothing but a counter-reaction to the reaction of the environment, and any such counter-reaction must necessarily and finally result in an anti-therapeutic effect. The article discusses the necessary mixture of being distant on the one hand, and closely sympathetic on the other; of being either part of the patient's own madness and/or remaining aloof from it; of finding a synthesis between the psychiatrist's existence as a person and as a professional worker; and, last but not least, of avoiding one-sided favouring of "nearness" and of imagining that there is such a thing as "ideal therapeutic communion". In short, the author suggests that the psychiatrist should not behave like an actor on a stage who has been asked to play a part that has been cast for him. The idea of opposition to therapy requires an antithesis, namely, that of the "Anti-Samaritan".
mesh_terms: D002321:Career Choice; D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011613:Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D012380:Role
vernacular_title: Der Mythos vom Samariter in der Psychiatrie--Gedanken aus Anlass einer Kontroverse.