You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Michael Robbins's book Experiences of Schizophrenia comes at a critical juncture in the history of contemporary psychiatry. He brings to us the fruits of 30 years of indepth experience in the treatment of severely disturbed and chronic schizophrenic patients—the bottom of the psychiatric barrel. His effort has resulted in a remarkable book—a testimony to his dedication and devotion to this most difficult and demanding arena of psychiatric concern. His message is one that every psychiatrist and mental health worker should pay serious attention to, and one that we can all profit from.
Robbins espouses a point of view that stands outside the current of contemporary research and thinking about schizophrenia. He harkens back to a rich clinical tradition based in a psychoanalytic orientation that understood schizophrenia as an expression of patterns of human meaning and motivation gone astray. The guiding spirit of this frame of reference was Elvin Semrad, long the guiding and revered spirit of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, where Robbins and I trained. The spirit of Semrad breathes on every page of this work—it is a spirit of humane concern, caring, dedication, a willingness to endure the pain, self-doubt, and frustration of trying to enter into and understand the crazed world of the schizophrenic mind. Robbins presents us with a picture of the therapist at work, making few suppositions that are not verified in his experience with each individual patient, persisting in the face of the seemingly impossible forces of self-destruction and