Psychotherapy with Ambulatory Schizophrenic Patients in Mixed Analytic Groups

Abstract

Introduction There is a large body of literature dealing with group psychotherapy as applied to psychotic, in their large majority schizophrenic, patients and practiced mainly in state and Veterans' Administration Hospitals and their outpatient departments (Breckir, Geller, Low, Hulse, and others). This type of group psychotherapy practice is geared to the psychotic symptomatology of the patients and uses mainly repressive or generally supportive features for the improvement of the patients' acutely psychotic condition and for the better handling of hospital routines. The purpose of this presentation is basically different from the above-described procedures, as we are geared toward a dynamic, psychoanalytically oriented treatment process directed at the basic psychodynamics of emotionally disturbed human subjects. This paper reports on the application of psychoanalytically oriented group psychotherapy to ambulatory adult schizophrenic patients. The groups are organized in the private psychiatric office or in hospital outpatient clinics. The therapeutic group is composed of