[Tools for a clinical assessment of patients' attitude toward their schizophrenic illness: 3. Examples of clinical...

Under the so-called "clinical experiment" a procedure is meant allowing investigation of some more individual clinical issues, which are difficult to standardize. In investigation of patients' attitudes toward their schizophrenic illness utilizing of this procedure may both broaden the scope of information (beyond what is to achieve during clinical interview) and deepen it (beyond what is attainable by standardized methods of investigation). Examples of two kinds of clinical experiments used in an investigation of 100 schizophrenic inpatients' attitudes toward their experience of illness were presented. The first one, drawing "I--illness", analyzed spatial relations between image and "self" and "experience of illness" drawn successively on the same sheet of white paper. It seemed to be useful in studying the degree of identifying the illness with the patient's self. The "sheet test" proposed a trial to execute an action toward a white sheet of paper symbolizing the patient's experience of illness. It was useful in evaluating--particularly in emotional sense--the patient's whole attitude toward his or her experience of illness. Some empirical results confirming validity and usefulness of such experiments were presented. They point that such kind of clinical experiments may valuably supplement the other more standardized methods of investigation of the patients' attitudes.