ABSTRACT
Occasionally a chronically suffering, deeply disturbed person, with diagnoses ranging from paranoid schizophrenia to schizoaffective depression to bipolar disorder, will respond to a more exploratory, uncovering psychotherapy, even if it is of short duration. Such was the case with Pamela, whom I saw in consultation for fewer than ten sessions. She was a professional woman in her mid-fifties, well educated, and married. She had made a number of serious suicide attempts, had hospitalisations both long and short, and had recently been in the hospital for several months after a suicide attempt. She had seen another psychiatrist for four years, as well as other therapists, with no amelioration of a worsening condition of auditory hallucinations and delusions which had persisted intermittently since college, when she was found shouting at the voices that pursued her. Most recently she had slashed herself in a serious suicide attempt leading to a hospitalisation where high doses of several antipsychotics and antidepressants were instituted.
