Identification with the therapist's functions and ego-building in the treatment of schizophrenia

People with schizophrenia lack the ability to develop--to differentiate and integrate--their self- and object-representations, and suffer from primitive 'object-relations' conflicts, which occur when they try to develop (to differentiate and integrate) their self- and object-world. When a therapist interacts beneficially with a schizophrenic patient and enables him/her to identify with the ego functions involved in this interaction, the patient's frail psychic structure receives nourishment that will strengthen it: this process is similar to human development, where a child attains psychic organisation by interacting with the one who nurtures him/her. The recommended approach in the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of schizophrenia is to 'allow' the natural evolution of the fusion-defusion and introjection-projection processes to appear in the experiences of transference and counter-transference.