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.
Silke Bachmann, Franz Resch, and Christoph Mundt were scholars at the University of Heidelberg when they published this article on the history of psychotherapy treatments for persons with schizophrenia nearly 20 years ago. The editors of Psychodynamic Psychiatry chose to highlight their paper “Psychological Treatments for Psychosis: History and Overview” because of its clarity, international breadth, and respectful account of the important place that multiple psychotherapy modalities have in the clinical treatment of psychotic disorders.
The International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychiatry (ISPS) was founded in Europe in 1956 by Gaetano Benedetti and Christian Müller, psychiatrists who were dissatisfied with the reductionistic treatment of schizophrenia. The ISPS and the American Academy of Psychoanalysis curiously share the same birth date. Started as a European study group, the ISPS soon after greatly expanded to establish national chapters across the world. Ann Louise Silver, a past president of The Academy became an ISPS leader and successfully linked our organizations. In her editorial to the special issue of Psychodynamic Psychiatry in 2003 on the benefits of psychotherapies for the schizophrenic person that featured the present article, Silver quoted Benedetti, who succinctly said: “psychodynamic reflection on psychopathology remains indispensable because only this forms the obligatory connection between the brain disturbance and the human condition of the patient.”
The very first sentence of Bachmann, Resch, and Mundt's review article found relevance in Benedetti's words by stating: “Establishing