ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the meaning of a patient’s psychotic symptoms and obsessional behaviour and offers a case study of a patient named Brenda who was admitted to a psychiatric ward, under a compulsory order, in an acute psychotic state. At the time of the presentation of Brenda’s case to a work discussion group, she had been attending a weekly psychotherapy session with a female psychotherapist for twelve months. During the early stage of the psychotherapy, Brenda reported that her psychotic experiences sometimes returned, when she would begin to think that sinister influences were emanating from some external source. Psychotherapy has shown how Brenda, once a caring mother-figure to her younger siblings, had remained in part an angry, traumatized, and emotionally deprived child. She had broken down at the time of a younger sister’s early adolescent pregnancy, an event that may have provoked the memory of earlier births of siblings who displaced her.
