Seminar on Clinical Topics: The Collected Works of Peter G. Ossorio, Vol. VII

Peter G. Ossorio s works are unique. In a trivial sense the same can be said of anyone's work: It is Jones work, nobody has the same interests and style as Jones, thus the work is unique. But Ossorio's works are unique in the most profound sense possible and on several counts: in the breadth of his subject matter, the depth and rigor of his analysis,the power and clarity of his exposition, and the absolute coherence of his conceptual framework. Most importantly, they are unique in their significance. Peter G. Ossorio has accomplished what nobody else has seriously attempted: he has articulated a rigorous and coherent framework for understanding persons as persons. Seminar on Clinical Topics is the transcription of a seminar offered to graduate students at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where Dr. Ossorio was a Clinical Psychology professor. The world of clinical psychology has changed dramatically since Dr. Ossorio offered this seminar in 1976. Behaviorism was on the rise then, and the reign of psychoanalysis was drawing to a close. In its second revision, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1975) was the subject of intense controversy: critics were fiercely opposed to its basis in psychoanalytic theory. Today, behaviorism is being displaced by neuroscience. A fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) has been released, and critics are now vehemently opposed to its basis in the medical model. Despite these changes, this seminar is as fundamentally different, both conceptually and methodologically, from anything in the field today as it was almost 40 years ago.