The continuity of personality in schizophrenia.
Some schizophrenic patients claim that their personalities have been damaged or destroyed so that they bear little or no resemblance to their former selves. This assertion has several unfortunate consequences: patients believe that they no longer have access to skills they had acquired previously, and they believe that understanding their past has no relevance in trying to make sense of the present or in appreciating the source of their expectations for the future. This article provides clinical examples of the continuity of personality and considers why patients and some clinicians might hold opposite points of view on this issue.
New York Hospital-Westchester Division, Cornell University Medical Center.
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Selzer
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Schwartz