ABSTRACT
Bleuler had underlined the importance of thinking disorders in schizophrenics and had observed also their difficulty in associating; the associative process, he argued, is blocked. This corresponds to a global split in the personality. Minkowski investigated the schizophrenic's lack of contact, not only with respect to thinking but also in his relationship to the world (loss of vital contact). The schizophrenic is usually described as malfunctioning because of his 'tendency' to cut himself off from reality. The psychoanalyst is the mediator of this encounter, which takes the form of a psychotic crisis. Hanna Segal discusses the schizophrenic's incapacity to tolerate depression, and Melanie Klein argues that it is the impossibility of working through the depressive position which obstructs whole-object relations and ego integrative processes. Depression has to do with loss and separation, the possibility or otherwise of tolerating mourning, and the differentiation between internal and external reality; as such, it is related to symbol formation and word-representations.
