Thoughts on the treatment of schizophrenia

The author contends that the clinical relationship is the foundation for treating the person with schizophrenia. However, the models and scientific data available to the clinician have been limited by prevailing ideologies. Despite important contributions from interpersonal, pharmacologic, and rehabilitation treatment perspectives, each has curtailed the range of clinical observation and the capacity for integration of treatments. Even recent advances in clinical science methodology have contributed to a short fall in treatment knowledge. The author espouses a broad medical model for defining the range of data and integration of techniques relevant to therapeutics. He views phenomenology as the crucial concept for clinical exploration, and contrasts this approach with the shallowness of purely descriptive approaches on the one hand and the distortion imposed by theoretical presentiments of psychotherapy on the other. Continuity of care and integration of therapies can emerge from phenomenology in the context of the clinical relationship.