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This monograph is the result of a two-year project devoted to an inquiry into the
possibilities of psychological treatment and rehabilitation of chronic schizophrenic patients in mental hospitals. The research team, consisting of a psycho-analyst, a clinical psychiatrist, and a clinical psychologist, seeks a coherent theory of schizophrenic manifestations as a basis for a rational non-empirical therapy. While recognizing the value of the organic approach, they limit themselves to psychological concepts in elaborating what was intended to be a synthesis of different approaches but emerges as an essential psychoanalytic statement.
The method of study was an application of psycho-analytic insights in a group setting. By careful observation of the behaviour of patients in the refractory ward, in a new and pleasant environment, and in group psychotherapy, it was possible to study the conditions attendant upon the emergence, persistence, and disappearance of schizophrenic symptoms. The modes of relationship to other patients, nurses, and doctors were the most important observations in this study of the schizophrenic “as a living individual acted upon by interpersonal forces that promote or impede recovery”. The results of the investigation, carried out with a profound concern and respect for the patient, are formulated in terms of psycho-analytic theory.
A valuable chapter, assessed by Anna Freud as “an exceptionally clear and succinct summary of certain basic principles of psycho-analytic thinking”, is followed by a history of “psychopathological theories” of schizophrenia from 1896 to 1923. After an initial shock at finding no mention at all of Jung's contributions, it is realized that “psychopathology” is here restricted to work which has the psycho-analytic imprimatur. This review, valuable within its serious limitations, leads up to the formulation of the authors' descriptions of schizophrenia as a disease affecting the ego and associated secondary processes. They cr