The effect of fantasies of merging with a good mother on schizophrenic pathology.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of subliminal symbiotic stimulation alone and in conjunction with an enhancement procedure on the pathology of relatively differentiated and relatively undifferentiated schizophrenics. It was hypothesized that enhancing the positive attributes of the schizophrenic's image of his mother prior to stimulating a fantasy of a symbiotic merger might increase his ability to benefit from the subliminal symbiotic stimulus. This hypothesis was not supported. Differentiated schizophrenics who received both enhancement procedure and the subliminal symbiotic stimulus showed no pathology reduction, whereas differentiated schizophrenics who received only the subliminal symbiotic stimulus manifested significant reductions in both pathological thinking and pathological behavior. Undifferentiated schizophrenics showed no reduction in pathology after the symbiotic stimulus regardless of whether or not they also received the enhancement procedure. An important finding which emerged was that the subliminal enhancement stimulus alone--i.e., without the symbiotic stimulus--resulted in reductions in pathological behavior for both differentiated and undifferentiated schizophrenics. It was concluded that although enhancing the positive attributes of the schizophrenic's maternal representation did not increase his ability to benefit from subliminal symbiotic stimulation, it did reduce pathology in its own right.