Main description:

Today, more than 70 years after Eugen Bleuler introduced the term schizophrenia, the human condition so labeled continues to pose a formidable challenge to the helping professions. In recent years it may seem that this challenge can be met most successful- ly by biologicalIy oriented researchers and therapists: AlI over the world neuroleptic drugs have made it possible to control disturbing symptoms and shorten hospital stays. Ever more refined technologies permit study of intricate neurophysiological and pharma- cological processes that seem to underlie, if not contribute to, schizophrenic disorders. Most recently, the discovery of the endorphins promises a new therapeutic breakthrough. At the same time, a vast and growing research litera ture confirms the importance, if not primacy, of hereditary and neurophysiological fac tors in the etiopathogenesis of these disorders. And yet, as Loren Mosher notes in this volume, after 2 decades of almost universal usage of neuroleptics, it is now dear that they do not cure schizophrenia.
It is also c1ear that they have serious, sometimes irreversible toxicities, that recovery may be impaired by them in at least some schizophrenics, and that they have little effect on long-term psychosocial adjustment.

Contents:

I. Family Research.- Family Interaction: Patterns Predictive of the Onset and Course of Schizophrenia.- The Finnish Adoptive Family Study: Adopted-Away Offspring of Schizophrenic Mothers.- The Rochester Risk Research Program: A New Look at Parental Diagnoses and Family Relationships.- II. The Treatment Setting.- How to Improve the Treatment of Schizophrenics: A Multicausal Illness Concept and Its Therapeutic Consequences.- Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia in Community Psychiatry: 2-Year Follow-up Findings and the Influence of Selective Processes on Psychotherapeutic Treatments.- The Open Hospital and the Concept of Limits.- Scientific Evidence and System Change: The Soteria Experience.- Community Work and Participation in the New Italian Psychiatric Legislation.- III. Individual Psychotherapy.- Clinical Considerations From Empirical Research.- Some Preliminary Thoughts on the Psychotherapy of the Schizophrenias.- Possibilities and Limits of Individual Psychotherapy of Schizophrenic Patients.- The Establishment of Transference in the Psychoanalysis of Schizophrenics.- Therapists Who Treat Schizophrenic Patients: Characterization.- IV. Family Therapy.- The Schizophrenic and His Family.- Reflections on the Family Therapy of Schizo-Present Families.- The Unconscious Transmission of Hidden Images and the Schizophrenic Process.- Brief Therapy of Schizophrenia.- A Psychoeducational Model of Family Treatment for Schizophrenia.- A New Method for Therapy and Research in the Treatment of Schizophrenic Families.- Final Discussion with Comments.