Michael Selzer – författare

The person with schizophrenia poses a formidable challenge even to the experienced clinician. Bizarre, unpredictable behavior, disordered thought patterns, peculiar, even unintelligible speech, and extreme distrust can drastically limit the clinician's ability to conduct therapy. It is often seemingly impossible to determine the cause of these behaviors: Are they a result of the disease, the side effects of drugs, or the patient's efforts to cope?In this brilliant and insightful book, Dr. Michael Selzer and his colleagues offer a radical new perspective on understanding and treating the schizophrenic person. What is often lacking, they argue, is a clear understanding of the patient's own experience of his world. Without a realistic appraisal of the patient's physiological and psychological vulnerabilities, the effect of various stresses on him, and his own unique adaptation to these circumstances, no effective drug or psychotherapeutic treatment intervention is possible.This thoughtful, intelligent, and acutely perceptive book is a major breakthrough for working with persons with schizophrenia. The authors have shown that therapy with the schizophrenic person is not only possible but highly rewarding.

As a clear and user-friendly guide for clinicians who work with patients affected by psychosis, this book challenges the false notion that psychosis is untreatable through talk therapy.The authors contend that since psychotic symptoms are features of survival adaptation, they naturally serve as a valuable source of information, providing clues about the origins of people's psychic derailment along with a path to its cure. The authors advise therapists not only to read and respond to the messages embedded in the symptoms, but also to recognize and utilise the non-psychotic aspects of the patient in facilitating recovery. The overall aim is to recruit the patient as a collaborator in their treatment, thus wresting a meaningful and redemptive narrative from the psychotic experience. All aspects and phases of treatment - from initial encounters through the middle phase to termination, and even supervision - are covered in this volume.Abundant with clinical examples, theoretical and technical points, and treatment methods, this book is essential reading for all psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and other mental health clinicians working with psychosis.