"Moving along" in psychotherapy with schizophrenia patients

Current treatment of the schizophrenic patient relies primarily on psychopharmacological management, psychoeducation, and family work. If individual psychotherapy is an adjunct, it is generally supportive. Recent focus on determinants of change in classical psychoanalysis suggests that noninterpretive mechanisms may have an impact at least equivalent to that of the well-timed transference interpretation. The author argues that the same noninterpretive mechanisms may be even more important for change in patients in a supportive process. A case study is used to illustrate that such an application of psychoanalytic principles and developmental research can be used to help even the most disturbed patients.