Crisis Theory and Possibilities of Therapeutic Intervention

Crisis theory offers a model of value in planning both treatment and preventive services in psychiatry of personality as a dynamic equilibrium, with a storehouse of coping mechanisms which can be adapted to cope with most life situations, but which becomes fluid and disorganized when faced with a potentially insoluble challenge.

Abstract

Too few psychiatrists in Britain have received an adequate training in psychotherapy, and the teaching of human personality growth and development is often woefully inadequate at both undergratuate and postgraduate levels—a state of affairs sometimes justified on the basis that existing knowledge has not been scientifically validated. For some psychiatrists their only training in communication with their patients is in clinical interviewing and their only understanding of their patients emotional life is derived from a study of gross psychopathology.