Historical aspects in the psychotherapy of psychoses

Abstract

The author presents a brief historical overview into the origin of the psychotherapy of psychoses. At the turn of the 20th century in the Burghölzli clinic in Zurich, its director, E. Bleuler, along with his closest collaborators such as C. G. Jung and S. Spielrein tried a new therapeutic approach with psychotic patients based on psychoanalytic theories. The method, which was quickly exported to the US, is based on the American principles of functionality and loses the pessimistic aspects of Freudism over time, taking on positions more in line with the likes of S. Ferenczi and O. Rank. In the US, firstly with A. Meyer and then with H. S. Sullivan’s interpersonal theory, the method undergoes a socio-environmental modification and tends progressively towards the relativization of mental illness which is seen only as the result of a lack of affects and cognitive stimulation during infancy which psychotherapy must make up for. This trend, compounded by the theoretical psychoanalytic premise that equates hallucinations and delusions with oneiric images, has played a part in blocking research into the nonconscious which is the only road open for the understanding and the treatment of psychoses.