Interpretive psychotherapy in the inpatient community meeting

The purpose of the psychiatric inpatient unit community meeting is often unclear to the staff and patients present (Kisch et al. 1981). We shall suggest a clear psychotherapeutic purpose--that it be a place where staff members provide patients with the opportunity to become aware of fixed, stereotypical meanings that they, the patients, collectively give to the behavior, motives, and attitudes of other people. The means to this end is "here-and-now" transference interpretation of a particular type. This interpretation should be focused on the patients' resistance to the articulation of their implicit attitudes toward the staff. Particularly important is the interpretation of the resistance to the discussion of certain staff-related events and the explication of the meanings patients have given to those events. Such resistance usually takes the form of displacement and identification.