[Sociopsychiatric additional training at the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (author's transl)]

The development of sociopsychiatric additional training (abbreviated SPZA in the German text) is closely connected with the development of the psychiatric hospital of the Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH) from a level of psychiatric keeping aloof from everyday problems arising in a community, towards a type of medical care which remains close to community problems by paying attention to all the sectors that go into creating abnormal patterns in a community. The most important and still unsolved problems of the future are represented by the alternative of a jobspecific or comprehensive continuing education across the boundaries set by individual groups of professions (at present, SPZA is intended to look after several non-academic groups of professions) and are also represented by the alternative of continuing education bound to one institution or on a regional basis comprising several institutions. It is the aim of SPZA to create a therapeutically favourable environment and to establish therapeutic relationships in psychiatry, i.e. to reflect upon and to change the patterns of psychiatry, its attitude, and its institutions. The teaching aims are: Shaping of psychiatric institutions according to basic human requirements, in line with the continuing education concepts of the DGSP; furthermore, realization of the therapist's own share and the share of external sources in the therapeutic communicative process incorporating reflection of the pwn and externally conditioned socialisation; also, the acquisition of the technique of favourable communication, achieved by self-observation and reflection of the therapist's own patterns of behaviour in his capacity as a person dedicated to helping the patient. Another teaching aim is to head and guid therapeutic groups in accordance with the innate propensities and tendencies of the participants and the practical requirements of the institutions concerned. From the didactic point of view, self-experience, communication of theories, and the practising of the new patterns of behaviour desired by the participants themselves, are combined.