A Brief Study about Schizophrenia: Proposing and Defending a Treatment

This paper provides statistical evidence that in severe mental illness, like schizophrenia, the environmental factors dominate the biological genetic factors. The paper then makes use of Lacan’s theories to explain how schizophrenia can be explained as the absence of a developmental stage in the future schizophrenic. Such patient did have a faze in which the mother/child relationship dominated, and in which two fantasies were developed: i.e., my mother is omnipotent and perfect and I, the child, am everything the mother could want. The absence of a solid relationship with a third, normally the father, prevented these patients to correct the fantasies developed in their relationship with their mother. The paper refers to Karon to demonstrate that the therapist must start by respecting the delusions of the patient. The paper then analyzes the method of Villemoes which aims at improving the relationship of the patient to language by describing objects in the patient’s environment. Villemoes then helps the patient to describe the objects in the patient’s memory and lets the patient associate the memories of objects with the relationship with people that the patient developed. This allows the patient to slowly discover who (s)he has become. This is the time when Villemoes starts the process of ending the therapy.