[Inpatient psychoanalytic treatment of patients with structural ego disorders]

Psychoneurotic and psychosomatic patients with severe personality disorders suffer from structural defects of their ego-functions and are in need of specific treatment techniques which can be supplied by the differentiated strategies of inpatient psychoanalysis. The experiences of a specific inpatient ward of the Psychosomatic department at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim are summarized whereby the use of the inward setting to initiate long term psychotherapeutic processes is emphasized. According to an integrative treatment concept various verbal and non-verbal modalities of experience and working through represented by different members of the therapeutic team co-operate within their well defined functions. The main task of the team is to identify the various splitting mechanisms of the patients with personality disorders and to combine all the walled off ways of experiencing and social behavior into a complete picture of his person. To this end close attention is payed to the dynamics within the group of the patients as well as with the group of the therapists. As a precondition the setting of the ward and its rules of conduct for inpatient group life have closely to be watched and the respective behavior of the patients and the team has to be monitored. We describe our setting, the time phases of treatment, the tasks of the different therapists, and explicitely emphasize sociotherapeutic aspects for the final therapy phase. At last, we mention special emotional difficulties waiting for therapists who work in this setting.