BY SETH BORENSTEIN
 Herald Washington Bureau

 WASHINGTON -- One of the psychiatrists advising federal officials about how
 to ease Elian Gonzalez's transfer to his father said the boy's Miami relatives should
 show the child they are relinquishing him willingly and should maintain family ties
 with the father and Elian despite the ordeal over his custody.

 ''They visited him in Cuba before,'' said Dr. Jerry Wiener, retired chairman of
 psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center and past president
 of the American Psychiatric Association. ''If they do this in a positive way, they
 will be able to visit and maintain the relationship with the family there.

 ''Nobody wants to see this end up in a permanent split,'' Wiener added. ''The ironic
 thing is that these families visited back and forth.''

 Wiener is one of three mental health professionals helping the Immigration and
 Naturalization Service devise a strategy for the transfer.

 The three -- two psychiatrists and one psychologist -- are expected to meet today with
 Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

 On Friday, Attorney General Janet Reno announced that she had chosen as consultants
 Wiener, Dr. Paulina F. Kernberg, professor of psychiatry at the Weill Medical College
 of Cornell University in New York and director of the Child Adolescent Psychiatry
 Residents Training Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and Dr. Lourdes
 Rigual-Lynch, director of mental health services at the Division of Community
 Pediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

 Reno called the three consultants ''very, very fine experts.''

 Two of the three, Rigual-Lynch and Kernberg, speak Spanish.

 Wiener is past president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
 Psychiatry, chairman of the board of American Psychiatric Press Inc. and former
 chairman of George Washington University Medical Center's psychiatry
 department in Washington, D.C.

 Kernberg, who was born and grew up in Chile, graduated from the University of
 Chile's Medical School in 1959.

 As a professor of psychiatry at Cornell, Kernberg's research examines children's
 friendships and how they work with peers.

 Rigual-Lynch sees some of the most heartbreaking cases in New York City as
 director of the New York Children's Health Project at Montefiore.

 ''Dr. Lynch has worked with the most vulnerable child populations in New York
 City for the last nine years as director of mental health services for the Division of
 Community Pediatrics at Montefiore Medical Center,'' hospital division
 spokeswoman Thaler Pekar said. ''She works primarily with homeless children.''

 Rigual-Lynch earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from Adelphi University
 in Garden City, N.Y., in 1979 with a dissertation on self-esteem among Puerto
 Rican migrants.

 She was one of dozens of New York doctors who endorsed Vice President Al
 Gore for president last month.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald