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Identification with the Therapist's Functions and Ego-Building in the Treatment of Schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2018

Vamik D. Volkan
Vamik D. Volkan*
Affiliation:
Blue Ridge Hospital, University of Virginia, Health Sciences Center, Charlottesville, VA 22901, USA
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Abstract

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.

Type
II. The Treatment of Schizophrenia
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 164 , Issue S23: Integrated Approach to Schizophrenia , April 1994 , pp. 77 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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