ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some phenomenological and psychodynamic characteristics of psychotherapy with human beings who for shorter or longer periods of their life find themselves trapped or imprisoned in schizophrenic modes of existence. The danger of breakdown and its influence on symbolisation also brings to mind Donald Meltzer’s description of two kinds of pain, related to two kinds of internal object relations. The first kind of pain is the confusional anxiety in which the threat against the capacity to think is dominating. The other is the persecutory anxiety in which the threat against being psychically alive is dominating. One of the important contributions of psychoanalysis to the understanding of the human nature is its emphasis on developmental psychopathology. This term, developmental psychopathology, connotes dialectical relations between ‘subject’, ‘time’, ‘psychopathology’ and ‘psychic structures’. The developmental perspective is coherent with the emphasis on difficulties in symbolization, and outlines for a relevant therapeutical approach in the state of psychosis will be presented.
