Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia: A Psychoanalytic View from Without

The late ping-nie pao's account of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients is a view from within an important area of psychoanalytic investigation. It is an area somewhat sequestered from the mainstream of the mental health field in general as well as from the mainstream of psychoanalysis. The story of Chestnut Lodge is one of a noble experiment still under way. Given minimal constraints of time and money, what can psychoanalysis, in the context of residential treatment, contribute to the care and treatment of schizophrenic patients? Dr. Pao, as Director of Psychotherapy at Chestnut Lodge devoted his career to this question. Schizophrenic Disorders (Pao, 1979) is a distillate of the knowledge and wisdom he acquired.

This review is a view from without, because I have had little direct experience with treating schizophrenic patients in recent years. I continue to treat a considerable number of borderline psychotic patients, but my experience with schizophrenic patients goes back to the time of my psychiatric training and the early years of practice. My interest in the problems of schizophrenia, however, has been sustained through teaching and supervising in public hospital settings. But patients in such settings are seldom offered long-term psychotherapy. The situation I describe is not unusual. Few psychoanalysts in the United States have much experience