Investigation of a Learning Block in a Schizophrenic

This paper is a description of a therapeutic and investigative endeavor. The questions evolving out of the work are:

1. What is the nature of a particular patient's inability to learn except by rote?

2. Could she become open to learning processes?

3. How was her difficulty related to the schizophrenic process?

4. Would cognitive development ensue?

5. Would her concept of the world change?

6. Could the separation between herself as an entity and “world” as an entity be bridged?

The nature of her block was partially an inability to comprehend all but the simplest operational principles of relationship between objects, people and ideas. Through a double process of 1) being and communicating with the patient in terms of her concepts of living and 2) enlarging her concepts by infinitely small degrees, once communication had been established she became open to learning. Such opening is a struggle in that her compulsion to fight the world changes slowly.

Through describing her development, growth and attitudes, I hope to demonstrate that her learning block was an aspect of being schizophrenic. To describe her as unable to learn is to describe her erroneously. That her teachers could not teach her is more accurate for, by the age of five, Laura was already living in a fantasy world, in which she was either a wild horse or a German boy engaged in random fights, all people being enemies. When not in her fantasy world, she was miserable, frustrated, and chaotically furious. She recalls, at 5, plotting to prove that her kindergarten teacher was discriminating against her. The so-called proof was accomplished by deliberately lying to her teacher, who, seeing through the lie, insisted on reasonable behavior. Laura had constructed the lie as a test for the teacher: if her teacher would accept the lie as truth and therefore see Laura as a good child, it would mean that the teacher treated her fairly or “as the same and equal to the other children,” but if the teacher would not accept her as a good child, th