[Modification of affective behavior in the post-acute course of schizophrenia]

The results of the Expressed Emotion Research (Vaughn, Leff 1976) suggest that family factors, especially emotional tension and strain on the part of closely related persons, play a decisive role as to whether or not a relapse sets in. From a psychopathological point of view, the important question for the individual consultation and therapy guidance, however, remains unanswered; which patients, who are under relative severe stress, do not and which patients do after all, even under minor stress, decompensate? Even when one turns to a neurophysiological or cognitive vulnerability paradigm (Zubin, Spring 1977), the so raised questions cannot be answered in a satisfactory way. For this reason, the approach presented here is aimed at the mediating level of meaning and sense of events. This means that the different effects of the same kind of stress and therapeutic interventions with different patients, depend on a varied situational meaning of e.g. one and the same event. Therefore, the addressed topic of emotional atmosphere and, associated with this, affective and emotional activation of psychological representations is conceptualized by the new construct of affectionality. On one hand the active orientation of the person towards the world, in the sense of intentionality, is formed by a psychological dynamic directed towards certain objectives of meaning. On the other hand, intentionality corresponds with the person's feeling of being concerned by the world, in the sense which we call affectionality. The modification of the affectionality during the course of illness of postacute schizophrenics is shown here on the basis of empirical findings from follow-up examinations by way of the Rorschach Procedure. Finally, the results are discussed under the unifying aspect of affectionality, which again directs our focus to the original meaning of vulnerability as being a personal, but nevertheless in parts an empirically conceivable category.