Short Psychotherapy with Passive Patients

Abstract

The most pressing problem in general practice today is the provision of adequate psychotherapy for psychogenic illness, which is responsible for 30 per cent. of all consultations (College of General Practitioners, 1958) and only a small proportion of which can be treated by trained psychiatrists. This paper describes a form of brief psychotherapy directed towards modifying neurotic character traits and securing freer expression of personality assets in the passive compliant type of personality which was found in 71 per cent. of all patients specially interviewed in late 1959 and 1960 in a working-class Belfast practice.