A concept of human development is offered as a scheme to help understand the schizophrenic pathology and the therapist's role in treatment. The new concept offered is that the human infant is not utterly helpless but rather gives clues about his inner needs as well as being responsive to outer stimuli. Deficient experience in both modalities or inappropriate responses by the environment to inner needs will cause great difficulty in separating inside from outside, self from nonself. Although this concept is neither new nor different from classical psychoanalysis, as the author claims, the paper does elucidate with warmth many aspects of psychotherapy with schizophrenics. The author's obvious conviction is that work with schizophrenic patients is a rewarding experience for both patient and doctor.