Swimming Upstream: Teaching and Learning Psychotherapy in a Biological Era

Swimming Upstream: Teaching and Learning Psychotherapy in a Biological Era

Jerry M. Lewis

New York: Brunner/Mazel Publishers, 168 pp, 1991

This book is both a review and an update of the author’s seminal contributions to the psychotherapy education of psychiatrists. The title emphatically reflects what many of us who are committed to a certain vision of psychiatry feel as we attempt to educate the next generation of psychiatrists.

The literary style of Jerry Lewis is a marvelous combination of simple and direct language with highly self-revelatory content. His writing is at once very personal and very dignified. Compelling examples from his own experiences provide exquisite demonstrations of the method he proposes. Reading Lewis is more like listening to and being with a wise and close friend than just reading.

The book describes the seminar at the core of Lewis’ structured approach to psychotherapy education. Each chapter takes the reader through the content of the seminar with a clear outline of topic areas and elegantly simple concepts within each topic area.

For psychiatric educators who have found his approach useful and have modified it to fit their circumstances, this book is a pragmatic “state-of-the-process” message. We have neglected a component of values in our psychotherapy curriculum, and this book provides ideas on including relationship structure and family and marital function. For those who learned psychotherapy without the benefit of Lewis’ perspective, this book will be an exciting introduction to a new and better approach to psychotherapy education. For residents in psychiatry or other developing psychotherapists, this book offers a vision of collaborative possibilities in both the practice and learning of psychotherapy. An added bonus for all of us is the sense of being with one of the really great teachers in our field.