[Fundamental problems of therapeutic teamwork in psychiatry (author's transl)].

Certain institutional and organizational prerequisites are fundamental in present-day translation into reality of essential concepts of psychiatric therapy and rehabilitation. These include, for example, the basic structure of therapeutic co-operation and the form of such co-operation as practices by a multiprofessional team. The creation and shaping of facilities based on the principle of mutual therapeutic co-operation and joint working of team members engaged in therapy, are innovations and are representative of a development by which a specific style in psychiatry gradually takes shape and by which it becomes adequately conscious of its social tasks. As with all innovatory developments there is an inherent danger that individual elements of such innovations assume of life of their own and undergo mystification. The concept "team" in psychiatry form of co-operation can solve many more problems than it can cope with. Hence it is definitely useful to investigate critically into the structure of teamwork in psychiatry, into its possibilities and prerequisites and into the extent to which teams are superior to conventional forms of organization in meeting the specific demands made by treating the mentally diseased. It becomes evident that among the basic conditions of teamwork are significant attitudes to therapy and that the therapeutic approaches derived therefrom can be successful only on teamwork basis. At the same time, however, limitations become apparent beyond which teamwork - now no longer understood as a problem-related principle of co-operation, but as an ideology - threatens to become dysfunctional and anti-therapeutic, creating compulsions which are diametrically opposed to the very essence of therapy and also to the needs of the therapist group.