The Role of Psychodynamic Understanding in the Treatment of the Medication-Refusing Schizophrenic Patient: A Clinical Report

This paper describes the psychoanalytically informed treatment of a schizo- phrenic patient. The author discusses elements of a comprehensive treatment and il- lustrates how psychodynamic understanding can help avert impasses in therapy. In this case, for example, psychodynamic understanding helped the hospital staff overcome a sense of frustration and impotence in dealing with a patient who needed to isolate her- self in order to overcome feelings of panic. Rehabilitative work was important, not only to recover lost or lessened capacities, but also to modify the patient's feelings towards external and internal objects.