The Psychoanalytic Concept of Schizophrenia: I. the Dilemma

In Part I of this paper I have addressed my attention to what I believe are weaknesses in current psychoanalytic theory in so far as it is: (a) based on an instinctual theory emphasizing primacy of discharge rather than on the primacy of object relations; and (b) based on the fundamental importance of the infantile neurosis which, I hope I have demonstrated, is neither infantile nor neurotic. Instead, I have opted for a broader theory, which Klein and Fairbairn have long ago adumbrated, based upon the premise of an infantile psychology from the beginning of extrauterine life, functioning on a dual track system of both differentiation (and thus perception and cognition, though rudimentary) and dedifferentiation (the phantasied reunion with the object to deny the awareness of separation).

Of particular importance in normal and pathological development is the evolution of internal objects and their ultimate fate, i.e. whether they are externalized or projected. The sense of personal identity seems to rest on identification with these objects and subsequent release from these identifications. Each period of development will be the ongoing serial of the self in struggle and in harmony with transformations of these internal objects. This mythic infrastructure is an incompletely told tale which has too long been divorced from the superstructure of ego psychology.