Stages of outpatient analytic therapy with psychotic patients

Undergoing a modified form of analytic psychotherapy in an outpatient setti ng schizophrenic patients show a development evolving in five phases. In a first illusionary-narcissistic they show phase a hypercathexis of their own preambivalent feelings and they have an autistic attitude towards the ther apist and the therapeutic setting. Mostly after a binding therapeutic contr act has been established they enter an ambivalent phase where their main co nflict between self-related and object-related tendencies is acted out. If in this phase, there can be built up a dialogue through action by which the conditions under which the patient is able to engage himself in psychother apy can be successfully clasified, patients will feel encouraged to give th eir main conflict a scenic expression by transitional phenomena. This is th e third phase called the phase of partial-functional fusion or the transiti onal phase. If these phenomena are accepted by the therapist in an understa nding way, patients will now be enabled to gradually symbolize their main c onflict. That allows them in a fourth phase - the phase of reconstruction - to reconstruct their biography and to recontextualize their illness. In th e last phase - the phase of dialogue and separation - patients seek a dialo gue that leads to separation.