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Analytical psychologists have always had a special interest in the psychotherapy of schizophrenia. One of Jung's first books , was The psychology of dementia praecox, in which he reported his work with Bleuler in the Burgholzli Mental Hospital in Zürich, and the development there of his ideas. Other papers followed in this subject—right up to 1958. Chestnut Lodge has established a world-wide reputation for its analysis of schizophrenics in a hospital setting, and this book is a worthy successor to Stanton and Schwartz's The mental hospital, and the Collected papers on schizophrenia of Harold Searles.
It is an account of the results of a five-year study in depth, of the staff-patient relationships made with a small group of male chronic schizophrenics in a particular ward, of which one of the research team of two psychoanalysts and a sociologist was the clinical administrator. Information was collected by interviews with the nurses, doctors, and psychotherapists concerned, and questionnaires were completed by the nursing staff at three-month intervals. Some recordings of, and notes made about, therapy sessions were also available.
In the process of collecting these varied data, attempts were made to define more clearly the disabilities that the schizophrenics showed in their relationships. After a general survey of these, they began to focus on certain specific patterns that seemed important, of inconstancy, diffusion, and fragmentation of object relationships. They devised a