Treating the "Untreatable": Healing in the Realms of Madness
"Treating the 'Untreatable'is a beautiful forward development of Frieda Fromm-Reichman's seminal work. It's a creative confirmation of the virtues of psychodynamic  psychotherapy in the hands of a virtuoso for the most disturbed patients  many of us are reluctant to engage. For our residents who have little  psychotherapy training and for seasoned clinicians, the book is an awakening!"“In bell clear, eloquent language, Ira Steinman shows his deep knowledge and compassion for the mentally ill and their problems. He never falls into the trap of thinking that mentally ill people are only that, and so he pleads for the understanding that will allow therapists to elicit the strength and health in their sickest patients. The word 'cure' is seldom attached to schizophrenia. Dr Steinman dares to use it and sometimes to prove it.”“Treating The "Untreatable"demonstrates in a lucid and impressive way the possibilities for the intensive psychotherapy of severely ill psychiatric patients in a way that can lead to lasting benefit and restoration of full life functioning, much beyond the kind of systematic management that can come with the use of psychoactive drugs (though of course such medications are indeed part of Dr Steinman's treatments in selected cases). This kind of treatment was once quite in vogue in psychiatric and psychoanalytic circles back in the mid-2Oth century associated then with the names of Frieda Fromm-Reichman, Margaret Sechehaye, Gertrud Schwing, Harry Stack Sullivan, and John Rosen, the best known of that generation, but has since been largely eclipsed by the rise of the use of psychoactive drugs, and this I feel has been a major curtailment of the restorative possibilities of these patients.Ira Steinman's manuscript is an effort, and a substantial one, to redress this imbalance and to bring the intensive psychotherapy possibilities with these very ill patients back into the foreground. As such it can serve a very useful purpose for both the practitioner world and the world of current and potential patients.””Alongside psychopharmacological intervention and the benefits it brings, the treatment of seriously disordered individuals requires that their delusional beliefs be addressed psychotherapeutically; otherwise, there is no significant and sustained symptom relief. Ira Steinman'sTreating The "Untreatable"provides the most thoughtful, well articulated account available of how such treatment should be conducted, complete with captivating and instructive case examples.I wish we could have used his book in our residency program when I was Director of Training at the Department of Psychiatry, Mount Zion Hospital, San Francisco. I can assure you that clinicians from various backgrounds and with all levels of experience will want to readTreating the "Untreatable"and will find it enormously useful when they do.””I am very pleased to enthusiastically recommendTreating the 'Untreatable'by Ira Steinman. This is a most important book. I have no doubt that it will be controversial, but there are a good number of persons, of which I include myself, who are very familiar with the content of the kind of work that Ira Steinman is describing; although we might not all have the degree of success that he has, we do have similar successes and indeed there is a long history of such work from this approach. I think it very exciting to contemplate this kind of book, which will appeal to a wide audience and that focuses on immediate narratives of one person's clinical experiences in a psychodynamic psychotherapy as a treatment for schizophrenia.”“A brilliant story teller of journeys through Madness to Sanity, Ira Steinman, has skillfully and sensitively craftedTreating The "Untreatable"a must read for anyone interested in the work of true psychological healing. These compelling clinical tales combine the artistry of Robert Lindner'sThe Fifty Minute Hourand the clinical brilliance and wisdom of the writings of Harold Searles and Harry Stack Sullivan.”