ABSTRACT
Psycho-analysis comes to the consideration of the aetiology of illness which belongs to the territory of schizophrenia. There is very great resistance, especially among psychiatrists who are not psycho-analytically oriented, to the idea of schizophrenia as psychological, that is to say at least theoretically capable of prevention or cure. It was often said in reference to psycho-analytic theory that in the development of the normal child there is a period of psycho-neurosis. A more correct statement would be that at the height of the Oedipus complex phase before the onset of the latency period there is to be expected every kind of symptom in transient form. The trend in psycho-analytic study of psychosis is nevertheless towards the theory of psychological origin. It is important to state this fact, that the psycho-analytic study or madness, whatever that means, is being done chiefly on the basis of the analysis of what are called borderline cases.
