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Schwartz-Salant: Hyman Spotnitz is a central figure in the understanding of the borderline patient and preoedipal disorders. He is honorary president of the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, and author of numerous publications, among them, The Couch and the Circle: A Story of Group Psychotherapy; Modern Psychoanalysis of the Schizophrenic Patient: Theory of the Technique; Psychotherapy of Preoedipal Conditions: Schizophrenia and Severe Character Disorders; and co-author of Treatment of the Narcissistic Neuroses. It is a great pleasure to have Dr. Spotnitiz with us today.
When Freud first worked with patients, he was treating psychoneurotics. They had oedipal problems. Patients with oedipal problems have a supergo and an ego and an id, all well organized in their minds. Freud's patients had the capacity to a greater or lesser extent to love the truth. Freud also loved the truth. They worked together to understand the problems of the human mind and their own personal problems. Freud primarily interpreted what was going on between them. So interpretation became the classical method of treating psycho-neurotic patients.
As time went by, you all know, the psychoneurotic patient seems to have disappeared. We now see borderline patients, patients who have character disorders and psychosomatic