Dr. Sarvis published a number of single and co-authored works in a variety of fields including psychoanalysis and guidance. Her works were well received by colleagues. A selected bibliography is included below.
| Year | Publication | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1954 | “Unique Functions of Public School Guidance Programs,”Mental Hygiene 38:2, pp. 285–298. | Dr. Sarvis encourages that a distinction be made between “transferrable” and “non-transferrable” services. Transferrable services can be acquired elsewhere, but non-transferrable services are those unique to a particular organization. When agencies consider which services to offer clients, they should prioritize non-transferrable services. |
| 1959 | “A Concept of Ego-Oriented Psychotherapy.”Coauthored with Ruth Johnson and Sally De Wees. Psychiatry: Journal for Study of Interpersonal Processes, 22: pp. 277–87 | Called brief and focused intervention, particularly in times of stress. As with Collaboration in School Guidance, the work emphasized “the useful next step.” |
| 1960 | “Psychiatric Implications of Temporal Lobe Damage.”Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 15: pp. 454–481. | Dr. Sarvis’ study of the effects of minor temporal lobe damage on children’s psychiatry created quite a bit of interest.This study profoundly affected her continued research and cemented her devotion to interdisciplinary study. |
| 1961 | “Etiological Variables in Autism.”Co-authored with Blanche Garcia. Psychiatry, 24: pp. 307–17, | Sarvis and Garcia advanced that autism is a multiple-origin disorder. Based on direct observations of children in a therapeutic nursery school, their study identified minimal cerebral dysfunction as a cause factor for autism, but also fell into contemporary thinking that linked autism with distant, cold and vindictive parents (especially mothers), a popular psychoanalytic perspective. |
| 1962 | “Paranoid Reactions: Perceptual Distortion as an Etiological Agent.”Archives of General Psychiatry, 6:2, pp. 157–162 | In this paper, Dr. Sarvis continued her research on temporal lobe disturbance, directing psychiatrists to look for damage when treating patients exhibiting paranoid behavior. |
| 1966 | “Longitudinal Study of a Patient with Premature Ego Development.”Coauthored with Stephen Rauch, Ph.D. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 5:1, pp. 46–65 | Dr. Sarvis’ extended case study identified temporal lobe damage as a cause for psychiatric disorder only after a significant passage of time. |
| 1970 | Collaboration in School Guidance.Coauthored with Marianne Pennekamp (Bruner / Mazel). | Pennekamp and Sarvis addressed how principals, teachers, mental health and social services experts (both outside and within the school), and the community needed to work together to help children create a plan that would help them function within the classroom and beyond. The mentality was towards adaptive problem-solving, through structured tasks aimed at making “the next useful step.” Vignettes from many Bay Area guidance workers fleshed out the theory in action in various situations, including particularly poor neighborhoods, severely disturbed children, and the secondary school level. |