Treatment Goal: Autonomy and Joyful Life

Abstract

The goal of an human-based or human oriented Psychiatry must be that the therapist does not only just superficially register symptoms of disease with a view to creating the basis for a subsequent attempt at ‘symptom-killing”, or making illness constructs disappear, but to work together with the patient to find new ways that will enable the patient to find a way out of his suffering and to return to a life he has chosen for himself that is as autonomous and happy as possible. The return to a life that is as autonomous and happy as possible as an expression of the comprehensive state of well-being defined by the WHO is also the most important treatment goal of human-based medicine. To achieve it, we have to move beyond a simple deficiency orientation to develop a resource-oriented treatment programme of the kind that was recently presented in the form of the Anton Proksch Institute’s Orpheus Programme, a modular therapy programme for addicts that is based on attractive treatment objectives and a life that holds joy. Besides the usual physical, psychological, social and spiritual resources, the main resources that are to be used in this treatment programme are those of Beauty and those of the possible.