Description
This book represents a product of work begun at the Chestnut Lodge Research Institute where for a period of six years, supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation, a study was made of the significance of interpersonal relationships in schizophrenia. Detailed information concerning the relationships of a group of chronically schizophrenic men with hospital staff members was collected not only from their individual psychotherapists but from a variety of other staff members as well. Methods employed included interviews, questionnaires and direct observations. Collating the information obtained from these multiple sources revealed patterns not apparent from separate study of either the doctor-patient or the ward staff-patient relationships.
A salient pattern which emerged was termed the need-fear dilemma. This became a pivotal concept in an object relations theory of schizophrenia, which the book presents. It is the detailed spelling-out of this thesis which is likely to prove one of the most enduring. and certainly one of the most controversial contributions of this book. As Dr. Cohen suggests in his Foreword: it is precisely this thesis that must be taken account of if a truly comprehensive theory of the etiology of schizophrenia is ever to be formulated.
