Main description:

Kevin Volkan and Vamik Volkan present a comprehensive study of schizophrenia using a psychoanalytic lens on the existing interdisciplinary research. Over the last seventy years, mainstream research on the causes, prevalence, and treatment of schizophrenia has greatly diverged from psychoanalytic thinking. However, the emergence of the field of neuropsychoanalysis brings hope that psychoanalytic metapsychology and clinical theory may once again provide valuable insight into understanding schizophrenia.

Psychoanalytic treatment may not be appropriate for many sufferers but psychoanalysis does provide insight to inform and improve treatment. It can also illuminate what aspects of schizophrenia are common across cultures, where they present unique characteristics, and just how cultural variations occur. For any future improvement in understanding and treating schizophrenia, the cultural underpinnings and expressions of schizophrenic illness need to be made clear.

For clinicians in the field, the authors' aim is to deepen insight and promote the use of psychotherapy and integrated treatments, while increasing sensitivity to cultural variations in schizophrenic disease. Accordingly, this book is divided into four sections. The first gives a brief overview and outline of the mainstream understanding of schizophrenia. The second drills down to focus on general psychoanalytic ideas about schizophrenia, culminating with a focus on problems with early object relations. The third looks at how psychoanalytic treatment can be successful in some cases. The fourth and final part discusses how views of the disorder and the disorder itself are affected by culture.

The authors hope to generate insight and understanding of schizophrenic disorders which could lead to new approaches to treating and possibly preventing schizophrenia. It is a must-read for all clinicians and trainees working in the field and presents interesting ideas to anyone with an interest in the subject.

Contents:

About the authors

About this book

Part I: Schizophrenia: Epidemiology, causes, neurobiology, pathophysiology

Chapter 1: Introduction and overview of schizophrenia

Chapter 2: Causes of schizophrenia

Chapter 3: Neurobiology of schizophrenia

Chapter 4: Brain structure and schizophrenia

Chapter 5: Cognition and schizophrenia

Chapter 6: Social-cognitive and emotional recognition impairment in schizophrenia

Chapter 7: Treatment of schizophrenia

Chapter 8: Non-psychodynamic therapeutic approaches to treating schizophrenia

Chapter 9: Recovery from schizophrenia

Chapter 10: Prevention of schizophrenia

Part II: The psychoanalytic metapsychology of schizophrenia

Chapter 11: Neuropsychoanalysis and schizophrenia

Chapter 12: Early psychoanalytic approaches to understanding schizophrenia

Chapter 13: A review of object relations and severe psychopathology

Chapter 14: Schizophrenic etiology and organismal panic

Chapter 15: The infantile psychotic self

Chapter 16: Flawed ingredients

Chapter 17: Fates of infantile psychotic selves

Part III: Psychoanalytic approaches to treating schizophrenia

Chapter 18: Psychodynamic approaches to treating schizophrenia

Chapter 19: Psychoanalytic treatment of adult schizophrenia

Chapter 20: Fusing-disconnecting and internalization-externalization cycles

Chapter 21: Development of a steady identification with the "good" analyst

Chapter 22: "Sophisticated" identifications and externalizations

Chapter 23: Permanent elimination of the infantile psychotic self?

Chapter 24: Oedipal issues and superego identifications

Part IV: Cultural elements in schizophrenia

Chapter 25: Schizophrenia and culture

Chapter 26: Causes and beliefs about schizophrenia

Chapter 27: Object relations and culture

Chapter 28: Culture-bound schizophrenia

Chapter 29: Psychoanalysis and syndromes of culture-bound schizophrenia

Last words

References

Index