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I am presenting some thoughts about schizophrenia based on my subjective feeling responses while working with schizophrenic patients over a period of time. At first, I was responsive to the apparent disintegrative process. I experienced an image of a schizophrenic person in which anxiety, rage, hatred, misconceptions, misinterpretations and defense systems bounded and rebounded in a random manner. At times, aspects of this process made the sense of being distorted integrating; at other times aspects of it were easily seen as other defenses against disruption; some times I saw an individual as being predominantly empty or inert. Other persons seemed burnt out, the struggle having ceased. Once in awhile I would sense a meaningful unitary process which eluded me.
For a time, I tried to understand schizophrenia through contrasting its patterns with those of neurosis and those of normality. The image of random bounding and rebounding receded into the background, but its constituents continued to be experienced as belonging together. During this period of understanding through comparing, I began to form another concept. This might be stated as: “He does not abstract essentials, he particularizes. He hates, and imitates love. He doesn't participate; he withdraws; he is not goal-directed; he is loose. He has no sense of time and space.
He does not learn; he imitates. He is not really dependent; he forms a false self by plastering himself on to other people. He does not initiate; he watches and imitates.” Such concepts as looseness of associating, concrete thinking, amorphousness, and lack of ego boundaries become meaningful symbols for the above sensings. The realization that much of this was an attempt to organize my experiences and reading via an analysis of negatives and deficits, led me to attempt a positive approach which might be stated as: “How is the schizophrenic living his life?” All of my thinking, feeling, and sensing on this subject has been profoundly shaped by