[Insight into the illness by schizophrenic patients: a psychoanalytic perspective].

People suffering from schizophrenia usually lack insight in their illness leading to considerable problems in clinical treatment. This paper investigates the consequences of lacking insight for the psychoanalytic treatment of schizophrenic patients. Review of the literature reveals that lacking insight forces to substantial modifications of psychoanalytic technique. The therapist has to engage much more in establishing a relation with the schizophrenic patient than in others. The technique applied differs from therapist to therapist and seems to be determined by the therapist's personality primarily. This results in a reversal of Freud's metaphoric description of the therapist as the patent's mirror: on this occasion the patient is a mirror of the therapist's concepts of personality.