Discussion

Dr. Cantor has given us a scholarly review and the benefit of his clinical experience in this clinically baffling and therapeutically frustrating entity which he has termed “Occult Schizophrenia.” Being in essential agreement with Dr. Cantor, I shall limit my discussion to my own experience with such patients.

I want to focus on the particular group of individuals who never had acute psychotic episodes. These are the patients who go from therapist to therapist, who have been diagnosed at various times in their lives as anxiety neurosis, conversion hysteria, obsessive-compulsive, character disorder, phobic reaction, or pseudoneurotic schizophrenia. These are the stabilized individuals who continue to function albeit with fluctuations in level of achievement. These are the patients who, during the early stages of analytic treatment, often promise to be rewarding. As we work with them we see periods of lassitude and hyperactivity, both associated with a diminution of perception and self-use. I do not mean that they do not take in data, or that they do not act. They may be extremely skilled, informed and capable of prodigious intellectual gymnastics, but what is missing is an active inner connecting, so that data acquired is merely part of a compendium