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Descriptive psychiatrists have attempted to classify the various forms of schizophrenia, but without being able to lend insight into structure. Because these psychiatrists have lacked the proper tools to relate preceding phenomena to the psychosis proper, they have concentrated merely on psychotic symptoms. It cannot be denied, however, that in its limited field descriptive psychiatry has done excellent work.
In recent years psychotherapists have invaded the field of the psychosis. So far, however, I cannot find that they have contributed very much to the increase of our metapsychological insight. Apparently the therapists have set themselves the task of establishing contact with the patient and thus leading him back to reality. To attain their goal, they are unable to make use of classical analysis, and one gets the impression that they rely largely upon acting out together with the patient, and eventually upon the interpretation of content but not of form. They do not bother to classify the patient's ideas and therefore disregard many of psychiatry's pertinent findings.
The child therapists, who are making the diagnosis of childhood schizophrenia more and more frequently, have departed in still another way from the tenets of the old descriptive psychiatry. They completely ignore the established entities of illness in favour of a homemade picture of schizophrenia—a picture which has little in common with the classical types of schizophrenia.
I shall therefore go my own way in an attempt to bring clarity into the process of schizophrenia. In my present paper I shall have time only to state some of the results of my research, and for further details I would refer you to my previous publications on schizophrenia.
Before the patient acquires such marked psychotic symptoms as delusions, hallucinations, etc., he goes through a period which deviates from normality. During this period a regular neurosis, such as hysteria or an obsessional neurosis as seen in daily ana