[Personal development in schizophrenia therapy].

Gaetano Benedetti introduced the psychotherapy of schizophrenics in Burghölzli in the early fifties. In this paper he reviews the development of his work and appreciates the significance of Bleuler's concept of schizophrenia. He then traces an outline of his communicative psychopathology: Of primary importance for the psychotherapist is the awareness that there are also anti-psychotic intentions in the patient which are trying to be expressed through the psychotic figurations. The psychotherapist accepts the psychotic experiences of his patients in order to transform them through his identification with them, resulting in the positivization of psychopathology. It is, as if here, in this field of psychotherapeutic duality, that the otherwise lost dimension of humanity in psychosis can find expression.