Sealing-over in a therapeutic community

Integrating and sealing-over are terms that are frequently used to describe a patient's general style of coping with stress, especially the stress of an acute psychotic break. Work to date (McGlashan et al., 1975, 1976, in press; Levy et al., 1975) has defined these terms both clinically and dynamically within the context of a patient's relationship to his own psychosis. Integration and sealing-over as concepts have also proved useful in understanding and describing interpersonal and group behavior on an inpatient psychiatric unit. A patient's ultimate style of recovery from an acute psychotic episode results from many forces-internal and environmental. The tendency to either review and assimilate (integrate) or deny and repudiate (seal-over) the often painful affects and ideas prominent during psychosis mobilizes various forces within the patient's social environment. The way in which the therapeutic milieu and patient interact with one another reflects and, in part, determines the manner and degree to which each party comes to master the patient's psychotic experience. This report explores this interaction as observed in an inpatient therapeutic community established to treat acutely schizophrenic patients.