[Multiple therapy (complementary therapy)].
The term "Multiple therapy" is used to describe the combined use of more than one therapist for one patient following a preconceived plan (German: "Komplementärtherapie"). Combined with dynamic ward groups this approach intensifies the impact of short term in-hospital treatment. The purpose of this strategy is to fragment the patient's defenses, to shorten the therapeutic process and to prime and prepare the patient for ambulatory treatment after discharge. The employment of Multiple therapy in a hospital minimally necessitates workable interpersonal relationships between the members of the team, intensive supervision to prevent countertransference problems and a compatible point of view regarding the goal of treatment amongst the staff. All therapeutic methods, new or old, are in the final analysis nothing else than what the word connotes: a method, a means to an end. They never represent the way itself. The quality of psychiatric therapy and treatment does not depend upon the method, be it multiple therapy, individual analytic therapy, one of the non-verbal methods used or any other. What really counts is 1) whether the method is used by a team which truly wants to cooperate for the benefit of the patient, transcending their own ego demands, 2) whether it really improves interpersonal communication. Every psychiatric patient is somehow alienated and removed from his fellow men. Therapeutic methods employed at the hospital are valid if they facilitate to bridge this gap. If that is achieved, therapy can be considered successful. If not, such approaches merely represent meaningless occurrences which at best foster an illusion that "something really happened". That is not the same as when we see the beginning of a healing process. The therapeutic atmosphere in the hospital is meant to create a climate wherein a natural innate healingpower of man will be liberated. The Romans knew it already: Medicus curat, natura sanat.