Transference-Phenomena and Transference-Analysis in an Acute Catatonic Schizophrenic Patient

In this paper I have concentrated on certain aspects only of this case. I wished to illustrate that a severely ill withdrawn schizophrenic patient is capable of forming a positive and negative transference, that the transference can be observed and interpreted to the patient, and that the patient responded both to interpretations of the positive and negative transference. I also endeavoured to illustrate that the withdrawn state of the schizophrenic patient cannot be considered simply as an auto-erotic regression. The withdrawal of the schizophrenic may be a defence against external persecutors, or it may be due to identification with an object by both introjection and projection. In the state of identification which may be experienced by the patient as a confusion, the patient is aware of being mixed up with someone else (his object). Another purpose of this paper is to illustrate the regression of this schizophrenic patient to a stage of earliest infancy for which Melanie Klein has suggested the name 'Paranoid-Schizophrenic Position'. The patient shows signs of an object-relation, in which he has impulses and phantasies of forcing himself or parts of himself inside the object, which leads to states of confusion, to splitting of the self, to a loss of the self and to states of persecution in which visual and auditory hallucinations are pronounced.

This object-relation and the mechanisms developed from it and connected with it have an important bearing on many other neuroses and psychoses; they have a particular significance, however, for the whole group of the schizophrenias.