ABSTRACT
This chapter summarises the position of the Melanie Kleinian group, which gave impetus to the theoretical and clinical study of this mental state and considers the therapeutic techniques that derived from Melanie Klein’s thought. Klein’s most important work is Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms, which saw the start of a specific therapy for psychotic patients. Herbert Rosenfeld, one of Melanie Klein’s most important pupils, left numerous accounts of his therapies undertaken with psychotic patients. Important point in Rosenfeld’s clinical research on psychosis regards confusional anxiety. An important problem though concerns patients’ ability to receive and understand interpretations. Second Thoughts is a collection of Wilfred Bion’s papers on psychosis from the 1950s onwards, which integrates retrospective reflection with Bion’s previous vision and shows extraordinary originality in the field of analytic theory and technique. In ‘Some aspects of the analysis of a schizophrenic’, Hanna Segal described her first psychoanalytic therapy with a young man who had developed a psychotic episode.
