Schizophrenic spectrum: retrospectives for the future of psychotherapy

Abstract

Three main questions would be considered in this paper: 1) the diagnosis of schizophrenia, 2) the methodologies to the study of schizophrenia, and 3) the psychotherapy of schizophrenia. First of all, with respect to the future systems of diagnoses, the inclusion of subjectivity and intersubjectivity are certainly indispensable for the enrichment of psychopathology. Diagnostic classifications require review in light of approaches aiming for a greater understanding of the illness and that make it possible to explain aspects that remain unclear with regard to the trustworthiness of the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Secondly, the use qualitative methodologies for the study of schizophrenia and psychosis seem highly appropriat. These are just the clinical pictures that have not been sufficiently tackled from non-objectivising approaches, and there is thus a significant lack of understanding of these phenomena beyond their apparent symptomatology. For this reason, it seems appropriate to use methods that attempt to characterise patients’ own worlds, such as the phenomenological method and the autobiographical method. Thirdly, it should be placed special consideration towards psychotherapeutic approaches to schizophrenia that focus on furthering the patients’ self-understanding and on establishing a common communicative basis of patient and therapist.