Psychoanalytic understanting of drug therapy in schizophrenia.

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy – a traditionally talking cure – has been considered as a therapeutic approach for psychoses with poor outcome due to the psychoses' biological rather than psychological base. Nevertheless psychoanalytic understanding offers a framework of relating to psychotic patients in a way that helps them to make sense of their experiences. Clinical material is presented where a setting is described to illustrate the application of analytic thinking to psychotic patients concentrating on the use of the drug therapy, and the transference and counter transference issues arising around the use of medication. It is argued that psychoanalytic thinking provides the framework to help the individual, their relatives and the professions staff in making sense of psychoses in order for the treatment to be complete.