Breaking through Schizophrenia

Wilfried Ver Eecke, PhD, is professor at Georgetown University in the Department of Philosophy and adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology. He has been teaching there since 1967, the year after he had a postdoctoral year at Harvard University, where he studied with Erik Erikson.Ver Eecke edited, translated, and published eight books and close to one hundred articles. His publications have appeared in ten languages. Two of his books are translated into Chinese, and a third is in the process of being translated.

Ver Eecke (Georgetown Univ.) presents an analysis of schizophrenia that places talk therapy at its center, exploring this intervention's possibilities for enhancing the lives of people who suffer from schizophrenia and those—professionals and family members—who care for them. For Ver Eecke, mental illness is framed in terms of the linguistic challenges that, failing to have been mastered while growing up, account for psychosis and schizophrenia. Through his use of Lacanian psychoanalysis, its points of resemblance to Hegelian philosophy, and the phenomenology of De Waelhens, Ver Eecke lays the groundwork for demonstrations of how schizophrenia may be approached therapeutically. The book concludes by describing three methods for treating schizophrenic patients and offers a reframing of them in terms of the Lacanian ideas discussed earlier in the book. In short, this is a magisterial account of the treatment of schizophrenia, a notoriously intractable condition, and it will have immense appeal to professionals in psychoanalysis, psychology, and social work. The included clinical examples provide fertile material for future conversations about approaches to treatment. Especially illuminating in this regard is Ver Eecke's reflections on the obligatory example of Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, the most famous case of psychosis in the analytic and psychological literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

• Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Psychosocial and Linguistic Complexity of Human Beings as a Basis to Understand Schizophrenia and Psychosis 1 Toward a Philosophy of Psychosis 2 The Subjective Experience of the Person with Schizophrenia 3 Philosophical Questions about the Theory of Psychosis in the Early Lacan 4 Paternal Metaphor and Ordinary Psychosis 5 Theoretical and Therapeutic Implications of the Later Lacan’s Complex Theory of Psychosis 6 A Post-Lacanian View on Schizophrenia Part II: Hegel and Lacan on Mental Illness7 Hegel as Lacan’s Source for Necessity in Psychoanalytic Theory 8 Hegel and Lacan on Paranoia and the Question of How to Avoid the Dangers Inherent in Ideas of Social Reform Part III: Psychosis and Schizophrenia Are Illnesses Marked by a Defective Relationship to Language 9 Phenomenology, Linguistic Intentionality, Affectivity, and Villemoes’s New Therapy for Schizophrenics 10 Self-Referencing in the Language of the Severely Mentally IllPart IV: Lacan’s Concept of “Paternal Metaphor” Applied to Schreber and Hölderlin11 Reflections on the Concept of “Paternal Metaphor” at the Occasion of Lacan and Schatzman’s Analyses of Schreber12 The Concept of “A-Father,” or the Psychological Origin of Mental Breakdown in Schreber and Hölderlin Part V: Lacanian Reflections on Successful Talk Therapies with People Afflicted with Schizophrenia and Psychosis13 A Lacanian Interpretation of Karon’s Psychoanalytic Treatment of People Afflicted with Schizophrenia 14 On Villemoes’s Lacanian-Inspired Treatment Method of People Afflicted with Schizophrenia 15 On Prouty’s Successful Treatment Method for People Afflicted with SchizophreniaConclusion Bibliography IndexAbout the Author