The individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy of schizophrenia: scientific and clinical approach through a clinical discussion group.

Fifty individual psychotherapies of schizophrenic patients, supervised by a control group for fourteen years, are examined. 80 percent of the patients have shown important clinical progress and, in many cases, have been healed, especially those who continued therapy for more than two years and who had a deep and reciprocal emotional involvement with the therapist during and after treatment; there was a reduction by 70 percent of hospitalizations during this treatment and only one of these had a relapse. Other data confirm the efficacy of psychotherapy; however, to give a new instrument of scientific confirmation to this type of individual and subjective work, we tried to observe how the psychopathological and therapeutic mechanism of "symbiosis" induces personal dynamics in the therapist which are reflected in the control group. The psychopathological symbiotic disturbance of the patient, the therapeutic symbiotic relationship, and the way in which the group reacts to these permit the creation of a useful triangle, both for the therapist to understand his position toward the patient and to confirm or correct the subjective aspects of such a deep and emotional relationship.