The much heralded biological revolution in psychiatry has placed the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of schizophrenia on the list of endangered treatments. In the rush to identify cortical atrophy, aberrant dopaminergic activity, and genetic markers, psychiatric researchers—and the clinicians they influence—are forgetting that schizophrenia is an illness that happens to a person. Even when psychotic symptoms remit with the help of neuroleptic medication, the person hiding beneath the symptoms is often longing for, but terrified of, a human relationship.

Those who are sceptical about the value of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients point to a handful of studies (Grinspoon et al, 1972) ; (May, 1968) ; (Rogers et al., 1967) that purport to demonstrate questionable