The Second Annual Frieda Fromm-Reichmann Memorial Lecture, this paper presents an approach to schizophrenia based on the well-known work of Fromm-Reichmann, and is supported by clinical, experimental psychological, biological, and philosophic data. A distaste for the concept 'disease of the ego' is expressed; schizophrenia is a 'reaction to, and an expression of, the social scenes in which an organism with certain biological endowments—usually adequate … to the task of becoming fully human—has its being'. In spite of this formulation the author's clinical observations and comments on technique indicate considerable psychoanalytic perceptiveness.