L'Homme Et Sa Psychose (Man and his Psychosis): By Mme. Gisela Pankow. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1969. 303 pp.

Mme. Pankow, a neuropsychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in Paris, presents in this book the distillation of many years of experience in the use of psychoanalysis for the treatment of schizophrenia. She has developed a new understanding of this condition and a method of treatment based on this perception. In formulating her theory and method, which she calls the method of dynamic structuration, she has formed a synthesis of the ideas of Freud, Kretschmer, and the existential thinkers.

Mme. Pankow's central theme is that the schizophrenic process involves 'dissociation' (Spaltung is her original term). She uses two images to describe this. First is that of Narcissus who drowned because he dissociated himself from his reflection to such an extent that he saw the latter as another entity with whom he fell in love. The reflection represented himself but was also divided from himself. Narcissus died because he saw his reflected image not as part of himself (that part seen from the outside) but as a totality. Thus the image of the body has two aspects: the contained and the containing—oneself subjectively experienced, as Narcissus perceiving the reflection, and oneself objectively experienced, as Narcissus reflected. Another perspective on this dissociation is given in the use of a character in a novel who is driven to an act of folly