Psychiatric Treatment of the Alienated College Student

Alienation, viewed as a sense of detachment from the values of one's society, family, and even from one's own feelings, is fostered among susceptible college students by the exclusiveness of the university campus, isolated as it is from the adult world. Although a preventive approach—a restructuring of faculty-student relationships—would be most effective, this author feels, such a change is not imminent. The psychiatrist, then, must rely upon psychotherapy in working with the alienated student, and some modifications of traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy are recommended for this purpose.