ABSTRACT
The loss of the capacity to integrate psychic experiences and the disintegration of personality structure are invariably experienced by the patient as an existence-threatening crisis. Further symptoms develop as a consequence of the patient's obvious attempts at counteracting decompensation, only leading to further impairments. The patient idealises his own parents and the parental home. The therapeutic efforts of working through the pre-psychotic episodes eventually lead to the patient's regaining a relatively stable psychic equilibrium. If the psychopharmaceutical medication has a beneficial effect on the psychotic experience, which subsequently brings about a relaxation in the therapeutic relationship, this may allow the patient to be more open to psychotherapeutic interventions. There may be fruitful and positive interactions, or there may be detrimental and negative interactions between the therapeutic work on the psychodynamics of the therapeutic relationship and the patient's experience of enhanced self-efficacy as a result of taking medication.
