Identification with the therapist's functions and ego-building in the treatment of schizophrenia.
People with schizophrenia lack the ability to develop--to differentiate and integrate--their self- and object-representations, and suffer from primitive 'object-relations' conflicts, which occur when they try to develop (to differentiate and integrate) their self- and object-world. When a therapist interacts beneficially with a schizophrenic patient and enables him/her to identify with the ego functions involved in this interaction, the patient's frail psychic structure receives nourishment that will strengthen it: this process is similar to human development, where a child attains psychic organisation by interacting with the one who nurtures him/her. The recommended approach in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of schizophrenia is to 'allow' the natural evolution of the fusion-defusion and introjection-projection processes to appear in the experiences of transference and counter-transference.
Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction, University of Virginia, Health Sciences Center, Charlottesville 22901.
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D000328:Adult; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D009769:Object Attachment; D010553:Personality Development; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology