An Anniversary Note

Retrospections are usually welcomed as they refer to… younger days, but also because they give ample room for boasting! But, as retrospections they are also happy occasions because they re-establish relations with events, and more specifically, with individuals without whom these successes would not have been possible. However, as a political intervention in psychiatry and psychotherapy, the OPC has accomplished much more than what it had initially intended or aspired to.

By adopting a personal kind of psychotherapy, we have applied the rarely followed principal of a classical clinical training that co-exists harmoniously with education. The fact that our institutes are housed in the same location along with the Centre, and the continuous interplay of therapeutic and educational activities has led to many practical and theoretical revisions, turning points and innovations in Education, such as:

• Inclusion of the Personality Assessment test in the patient’s Psychiatric Diagnosis;
• Critical reassessment of the Group Analysis and of the Therapeutic Community and active promotion of both to therapeutic procedures that are appropriate for serious psychiatric disorders;
• introduction of a demanding and reliable training for the staff of the Therapeutic Community;
• a completely new approach to supervision
• highlighting and undercutting of psychoanalytic ideologisms, and instead focusing on the individual Person and underlying the concepts of Resilience and Strength, while also creating a distinction between the two;
• finally, the OPC has launched a new publishing series entitles Contemporary Psychotherapy.

Overall, in the face of adversity and different kinds of strains, we take pride in for having achieved all this without any European or state funds but instead, with the exclusive care and help from patients and trainees alike.

            I.K.Tsegos

            President of the Administration Board