The Preschizophrenic Ego

There exist few data on the deeper structure of the personality of children who later in life have developed a schizophrenic psychosis. The importance of disturbances of the ego, not only in established schizophrenic symptomatology, but in the prodromal stages of the psychosis, justify a lively interest in the structure of the ego of the preschizophrenic child. Such knowledge might clarify the controversial problem of the choice of neurosis or psychosis; also, it is possible in some instances that the specific psychosis is potentially determined by early characteristics of the ego.

Clinical psychiatry provides abundant reports of schizoid personalities which were the precursors of schizophrenic psychoses; however, these are unsatisfactory for this study because they describe adult personalities; moreover, and this is most important, such studies are descriptive and without benefit of psychodynamics or the psychology of the unconscious.

Psychoanalytic deductions based on such material are inconclusive. The psychoanalysis of schizophrenic children, important as it is, interprets an established psychosis, not prerequisites for a psychosis. Comparative studies of 'normal' and schizoid children are what is required.

Despert arrived at conclusions which merit attention (1). She stresses the unity of the personality of normal children in contrast to the impairment of ego synthesis in schizophrenic children. 'Even in its most diversified identifications', she says, 'the child gives us an impression of personal oneness which the schizophrenic does not present'. She notes, furthermore, a difference in the testing of reality: 'The child's awareness of the "make-believe" quality of its play, or what one might call the volitional character of its fantasy, precludes a comparison between its orientation and the double orientation found in some schizophrenics'. Despert includes Karl Bühler and Susan