Psychological Theory Of Schizophrenia

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

author: Linde Nikolay Dmitrievich

Preamble. This article was published for the first time in 2000 in the "Journal of Practical Psychologist" and, despite some of its naivety and insufficient evidence, and the past 14 years, I still believe that it reflects the fundamental laws, that I am right on the main point. That the cause of schizophrenia is in unbearable pathogenic emotional states. That the key factor is giving up oneself and free will. The medical theory of schizophrenia was never developed.

I especially like my own explanation of the origin of initial hallucinations and delusions in schizophrenics through the compensatory theory of dreams. And also an explanation of why antipsychotics relieve plus-symptoms and do not relieve minus-symptoms.

SUTRA ABOUT SCHIZOPHRENIA

The one who refuses free will is insane, and the one who denies it is a fool.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Schizophrenia is still one of the most mysterious for medicine and tragic diseases for an individual. Such a diagnosis sounds like a verdict, since “everyone knows” that schizophrenia is incurable, although, as the famous American psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey writes, 25 percent of patients as a result of drug treatment have a significant improvement in their condition, and another 25 percent are improving, but they need constant care [9]. The same author, however, admits that at the moment there is no satisfactory theory of schizophrenia, and the principle of the effect of antipsychotic drugs is completely unknown, nevertheless he is completely convinced that schizophrenia is a brain disease, moreover, he is quite accurate indicates the main area of the brain that is affected in this disease. Namely - the limbic system, as you know, is primarily responsible for the emotional state of a person.

Such an important symptom of schizophrenia as "emotional dullness", inherent in all its varieties, without exception, is noted by all psychiatrists (see, for example, [8]), however, this does not push doctors to speculate about the possible emotional cause of schizophrenic diseases. Moreover, mainly characteristic cognitive impairments (delusions, hallucinations, depersonalization, etc.) are studied. The hypothesis that emotional disturbances may be the cause of such impressive and frightening symptoms is not seriously considered, precisely because people with schizophrenia appear to be emotionally insensitive. I apologize for using the not entirely scientific term "schizophrenic" in the future.

The theory put forward is based on the idea that the overwhelming majority of schizophrenic diseases are based on severe emotional problems of the personality, consisting primarily in the fact that a schizophrenic patient restrains (or suppresses) such strong feelings that his personality (a physician would say "nervous system") is unable to withstand if they are actualized in his body and mind. They are so strong that you just need to forget about them, any touch to them causes unbearable pain. That is why psychological therapy for schizophrenia is still doing more harm than good, because it touches these affects "buried" in the depths of the personality, which causes a new round of schizophrenic refusal to recognize reality.

It was not by chance that I said about the actualization of feelings in the body, not only psychologists, but also doctors will not deny that emotions are those mental processes that most strongly affect the physical state of a person. Emotions cause not only a change in the electrical activity of the brain, expansion or narrowing of blood vessels, the release of adrenaline or other hormones into the blood, but also tension or relaxation of the muscles of the body, increased breathing rate or its delay, increased or weakened heartbeat, etc., up to fainting. heart attack or complete graying. Chronic emotional states can cause serious physiological changes in the body, that is, cause certain psychosomatic diseases, or, if these emotions are positive, contribute to the strengthening of human health.

The most profound researcher of human emotionality was the famous psychologist and psychiatrist W. Reich [6]. He considered feelings and emotions a direct expression of the psychic energy of a person. Describing the schizoid character, he first of all pointed out that all the feelings and energy of such a person are frozen in the center of the body, they are restrained by chronic muscle tension. It should be noted that Russian textbooks on psychiatry [8] also indicate a particular muscle hypertension (overstrain) observed in schizophrenics of all types. However, domestic psychiatry does not associate this fact with the suppression of feelings and also cannot explain the phenomenon of emotional stupidity in schizophrenics. At the same time, this fact is understandable, given that emotions are completely suppressed, and so much so that the "patient" himself is not able to contact his own feelings, otherwise they are too dangerous for him.

If this is so, then we can assume that these feelings are in fact so strong that contact with them is extremely dangerous for the person himself, that the patient is unable to cope with them if he gives them the will, that is, he actualizes them in his body here and now, that is, allow them to manifest.

This conclusion is confirmed in practice. Carefully talking with such patients in remission, one can find out that their feelings, which they are not aware of (they themselves feel insensible), in fact have an absolutely incredible power for a "normal" person, they are literally characterized by cosmogonic parameters. For example, one young woman admitted that the feeling she was holding back could be described as a scream of such force that if released, it could "cut mountains like a laser!" When I asked how she can hold back such a strong cry, she said: "This is my will!" "What is your will like?" I asked. “If you can imagine lava in the center of the Earth, then this is my will,” was the answer.

Another young woman also noted that the main feeling she suppressed was similar to a cry, when I suggested that she try to free him, she asked with some "black" humor: "Will there be an earthquake?" Both of them recalled that their mothers in childhood constantly and severely beat them, demanding absolute submission. Surprisingly, most schizophrenics seem to have conspired, they all point to extreme self-abuse by the mother (sometimes the father) and the parental demand for absolute submission.

Other psychologists and psychiatrists with whom I discussed this topic have also pointed out the fact of abuse of schizophrenics in childhood. For example, the famous psychologist and psychotherapist Vera Loseva (oral communication) spoke out in the sense that schizophrenia occurs in cases when the parents have committed something cruel to the child, and the main task of the therapist is to help the patient psychologically separate himself from the parents, which leads to healing.

But indications of the strength of emotions and cruelty are clearly not enough, it is necessary to understand the nature of these emotions. Obviously, these are not positive emotions, this is, first of all, self-hatred, which he can also quite calmly inform the psychologist about. The schizophrenic hates his own personality and destroys himself from the inside, the idea that you can love yourself seems to him amazing and unacceptable. At the same time, it can be hatred of the world around him, so he essentially stops all contact with reality, in particular with the help of delirium.

Where does this hatred come from?

Maternal cruelty, against which the child internally protests, nevertheless becomes a child's self-attitude, and this manifests itself precisely in the period of adolescence, that is, when the child no longer begins to obey his parents, but to control himself and his life. This comes from the fact that he does not know other ways to control himself and another version of self-attitude. He also demands from himself absolute submission and applies absolute internal violence to himself. I asked a young woman with similar symptoms if she realized that she was treating herself the way her mother did to her. "You are wrong," she replied with a wry smile, "I treat myself much more sophisticated."

In the West, the theory of a cold and hypersocializing mother is known as the cause of the subsequent illness of the child, however, further "scientific" studies have not confirmed this hypothesis [9, 10]. Why? It's very simple: most parents hide the facts of their inadequate attitude towards the child, especially since this was in the past, most likely they themselves are deceiving themselves, forgetting what happened. Schizophrenics themselves testify that in response to their accusations of cruelty, parents respond that nothing like this happened. In the eyes of doctors, the parents are right, of course, they are not crazy! (A friend of mine was kept in the hospital and "injected" with strong drugs until she realized that she would not be released if she did not give up her memories of her parents' sadistic behavior. In the end, she admitted that she was not right that her parents were innocent, and she was discharged …)

Another weakness of this theory is that it does not explain how coldness and hyper-socialization lead to schizophrenia. From our point of view, the true reason is the same - the incredible power of the schizophrenic's hatred of himself, the complete suppression of his feelings, and the desire for absolute submission to abstract principles (that is, the rejection of free will and spontaneity), which arises from the requirements of absolute submission on the part of the parent.

Psychological causes of the disease can be generated not only by the cruel attitude of parents in childhood, but also by other factors, which explains a number of other cases. For example, I know of a case when schizophrenia developed in a woman who, as a child, was rather spoiled by her parents. Until the age of five, she was a real queen in the family, but then a brother was born … Hatred for her brother (then for men in general) overwhelmed her (see Adler's theory on the role of the birth order in the family [11]), but she could not express it, fearing to completely lose the love of her parents, and this hatred fell on her from within …

K. Jung cites a case [12] when a woman fell ill with schizophrenia after, in fact, killed her child. When Jung told her the truth about what had happened, after which she threw out her suppressed feelings in a completely overwhelmed tantrum, it was enough for her to fully recover. The fact was that in her youth she lived in a certain English city and was in love with a handsome and rich young man. But her parents told her that she was aiming too high and, at their insistence, she accepted the offer of another quite worthy groom. She left (apparently in the colony) there gave birth to a boy and a girl, lived happily. But one day a friend came to visit her, who used to live in her hometown. Over a cup of tea, he told her that by her marriage she had broken the heart of one of his friends. It turned out that this was the very rich and handsome with whom she was in love. You can imagine her condition. In the evening, she bathed her daughter and son in a bathtub. She knew that the water in this area could be contaminated with dangerous bacteria. For some reason, she did not prevent one child from drinking water from her palm, and the other from sucking a sponge … Both children fell ill and one died … Then she was admitted to the clinic with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Jung told her after some hesitation: "You killed your child!" The explosion of emotions was overwhelming, but two weeks later she was discharged as completely healthy. Jung watched her for another 9 years, and there was no more relapse of the disease.

It is quite obvious that this woman hated herself for giving up her beloved, and then for contributing to the death of her own child and finally breaking her own life. She could not bear these feelings, it was easier to go crazy. When unbearable emotions burst out, her mind returned to her.

I know of a case of a young man with a paranoid form of schizophrenia. When he was little, his father (a Dagestani) sometimes tore off the dagger hanging on him from the carpet, put it to the boy's throat and shouted: "I'll cut it, or you will obey me!" When this patient was asked to draw a person who is afraid of someone, then in this drawing, by the figure and details, it was possible to unmistakably recognize him. When he painted the one whom this man is afraid of, his wife unmistakably recognized in this portrait the father of the patient. However, he himself did not understand this, moreover, at the level of consciousness, he idolized his father and said that he dreamed of imitating him. Moreover, he said that if his own son steals, then he would rather kill him himself! It is also interesting that when the topic of restraining suffering, patience was discussed with him, he said that in his opinion “a man should endure until he is completely mad!”.

These examples confirm the emotional nature of this disease, but of course they are not conclusive evidence. But theory is usually always ahead of the curve.

In psychology, another psychological theory of schizophrenia is known, belonging to the philosopher, ethnographer and ethologist Gregory Bateson [1], this is the concept of "double clamp". In short, its essence boils down to the fact that the child receives from the parent two logically incompatible prescriptions (for example, “if you do this, I will punish you” and “if you don’t do this, I will punish you”), the only thing that remains for him is is to go crazy. For all the importance of the idea of "double clamping", the evidence of this theory is small, it remains a purely speculative model, unable to explain the catastrophic disturbances in thinking and perception of the world that occur in schizophrenia, unless it is accepted that "double clamping" causes the deepest emotional conflict. In any case, the psychiatrist Fuller Torrey simply mocks this concept [9, p. 219], as well as other psychological theories. All these theories, unfortunately, cannot explain the origin of schizophrenic symptoms, if one does not take into account the strength of the latent emotions experienced by the patient, if one does not take into account the force of self-destruction directed at oneself, the degree of suppression of any spontaneity and immediate emotionality.

Our theory faces the same tasks. Psychiatrists therefore do not believe in psychological theories of schizophrenia because they cannot imagine that such mental disorders can occur not in a destroyed brain, they cannot imagine that a normal brain can generate hallucinations, and a person can believe in them. In fact, this may well be happening. Distortions of the picture of the world and violations of logic occurred and are occurring among millions of people right before our eyes, as the practice of Nazism and Stalinism, the practice of financial pyramids, etc. shows. The average person is able to believe in anything and even "see" it with his own eyes, if this is very much! I want to. Excitement, passion, wild fear, hatred and love make people believe in their fantasies as reality, or at least mix them with reality. Fear makes you see threats everywhere, and love makes you suddenly see your beloved in the crowd. No one is surprised that all children go through a period of night fears, when simple objects in the room seem to them as some kind of ominous figures. Alas, adults are also able to take their fantasies for reality, and the process of substitution occurs completely uncontrollably, but in order for this to happen, supernormal negative emotions, supernormal stress are needed.

It is no coincidence that it was noticed that before the onset of the disease, for a certain period of time, future patients practically cannot sleep. Try not to sleep two nights in a row - how will you think after the second night? "Schizophrenics" before the onset of the disease do not sleep for a week, sometimes 10 days … If you experimentally wake a person at the time of REM sleep, when he sees dreams, then after five days he begins to see hallucinations! in reality! This phenomenon is perfectly explained by Freud's theory of dreams. He showed that in dreams people see their own unfulfilled desires. If this compensatory function of dreams is disabled, then compensation occurs in the form of hallucinations. Only a healthy person participating in the experiment realizes that these hallucinations are the product of his own psyche. A sick person, tormented by suffering, takes the images of hallucinations for reality!

My client with manic-depressive psychosis (I did not treat him, but only consulted) was shocked when I told him this concept! It turns out that before the debut of the disease, he did not sleep for 11 days without a break! Nobody told him anything like that, although he was in a psychiatric clinic four times!

Let us recall, by the way, the famous film "A Beautiful Mind", created on the basis of real facts. In it, a brilliant mathematician with a paranoid form of schizophrenia suddenly (after 20 years) realizes that one character from his hallucinations is really a product of his own psyche (a girl who never matured)! When he realized this, he managed to overcome his illness from within himself!

But "schizophrenics" do not sleep for a reason, because they have nothing to do, they are extremely excited and tense, they are overwhelmed by feelings with which they struggle, but are unable to defeat them. For example, one woman “went crazy” already in adulthood after a divorce from her husband, which she experienced to such an extent that she completely turned gray. In addition, the "soil" had already been prepared in the same standard way - as a child, her mother constantly beat her and demanded absolute submission, and her beloved father was a depressed drunkard. Mother said: "You are all in this Sidorov!" So, before she started an acute psychotic attack, she did not sleep in a row for about a week!

Summarizing the above, the causes of schizophrenia can be reduced to three main factors:

1. self-control with the help of absolute violence, rejection of spontaneity and immediacy;

2. incredible power of hatred for oneself, for one's personality;

3. suppression of all feelings and sensory contact with reality.

Priority in the education of schizophrenia must unconditionally be given to the first principle. The rejection of spontaneity, following internal direct impulses and desires comes from the fact that in childhood the child learned only to obey the parent and suppress himself, not to trust himself. Managing oneself in this way leads to a mechanical existence, subordination to abstract principles, constant tension and self-control. That is why all feelings are "driven" deep into the personality and contact with reality stops. All possibility of obtaining satisfaction from life is lost, since direct experience is not allowed. The proposal to manage myself somehow differently, more gently, causes misunderstanding or active resistance, such as: "How can I force myself to do what I do not want?"

However, this refers rather to a state of remission, during a psychotic attack, nature seems to take its own, creating a feeling of absolute freedom and irresponsibility. The unrelenting inner will, which usually suppresses any spontaneity, breaks down, and the flow of insane behavior brings a certain relief, it is a hidden revenge on the abusive parent and allows forbidden impulses and desires to be realized. In fact, this is the only way to relax, although in another version, psychosis can also manifest itself as super tension - the seizure of the whole being by a cruel will, which serves as a manifestation of the child's boundless stubbornness (or fear) and in this sense also revenge, but of a different kind.

Here is an example taken from the book by D. Hell and M. Fischer-Felten "Schizophrenia" - M., 1998, p. 61: I concluded: my will is not to want, but to obey, i.e. I was at one with my psychosis, not rowing upstream. Therefore, psychosis as a feeling of loss of self-control did not cause fear in me."

It is clearly seen from this passage that the "schizophrenic" seeks to submit to psychosis, that his will is directed toward submission, as it was, apparently, in childhood. At the same time, psychosis allows you to get rid of self-control, which is also very desirable for the "patient". That is, an attack is both painful submission and protest at the same time. In a conversation with one psychotic young man who showed an amazing ability to think logically (his father, who observed this, was in shock), to ask smart questions, I asked him some uncomfortable question for him. He did not answer for a long time, I asked again. Then his face suddenly assumed an idiotic expression, his eyes rolled upward under his eyelids, and he clearly began to create an attack. “You won't fool me,” I said, “I'm not your doctor. I know perfectly well that you hear and understand everything. " Then his eyes went down, focused, he became completely normal and somehow surprised he said: "But I really understand everything …". He never answered the question.

The principle of absolute obedience is realized in fantasies (which acquire the status of reality due to a violation of the reality testing process): about voices that order something to be done and which are very difficult not to obey, about dangerous persecutors, about secret signs given by someone in the strangest forms, about the telepathically perceived will of aliens, God, etc., forcing to do something ridiculous. In all cases, the "schizophrenic" considers himself a powerless victim of powerful forces (as it was in his childhood) and relieves himself of any responsibility for his condition, as befits a child for whom everything is decided.

The same principle, manifested in the rejection of spontaneity, sometimes leads to the fact that any movement (even taking a glass of water) turns into a very difficult problem. It is known that the intervention of conscious control in automated skills destroys them, while the "schizophrenic" controls literally every action, sometimes leading to complete paralysis of movements. Therefore, his body often moves like a wooden doll, and the movements of individual body parts are poorly coordinated with each other. Facial expressions are absent not only because feelings are suppressed, but also because he “does not know” how to express emotions directly or is afraid to express “wrong feelings”. Therefore, "schizophrenics" themselves note that their face is often pulled into a motionless mask, especially when in contact with other people. Since spontaneity and positive feelings are absent, the schizophrenic becomes insensitive to humor and does not smile, at least sincerely (the laughter of a patient with hebephrenia [8] evokes horror and sympathy among others rather than a sense of ridicule).

The second principle (rejection of feelings) is connected, on the one hand, with the fact that in the depths of the soul lurk the most nightmarish feelings, contact with which is simply terrifying. The need to restrain feelings leads to constant muscle hypertension and alienation from other people. How can he feel other people's experiences when he does not feel his incredible power of suffering: despair, loneliness, hatred, fear, etc.? The belief that no matter what he does, all this will still lead to suffering or punishment (here the theory of "double clamping" may be appropriate), can lead to complete catatonia, which is a manifestation of absolute restraint and absolute despair.

Here is another example from the same book by D. Hell and M. Fischer-Felten (p. 55): “One patient reported his experience:“It was as if life were somewhere outside, as if dried out”. Another schizophrenic patient said: “It was as if my senses were paralyzed. And then they were created artificially; I feel like a robot."

A psychologist would ask, "Why did you paralyze your senses and then turn yourself into a robot?" But the patient considers himself to be just a victim of the disease, he denies that he is doing this to himself, and the doctor shares his opinion.

Note that many "schizophrenics", performing the task of drawing a human figure, introduce various mechanical parts into it, gears, for example. The young man, who was clearly in a borderline state, drew a robot with antennas on its head. "Who is this?" I asked. “Elik, electronic boy,” he replied. "And why antennas?" "To catch signals from space."

Self-hatred forces the "schizophrenic" to destroy himself from the inside, in this sense, psychophrenia can be defined as the suicide of the soul. But the number of real suicides among them is approximately 13 times higher than the similar number among healthy people [9]. Since outwardly they look calm people, the doctors do not even suspect what hellish feelings are tearing them apart from the inside, especially since for the most part these feelings are "frozen", and the patient himself does not know about them or hides them. Patients deny that they hate themselves. Moving problems to the area of delusion helps him to escape from these experiences, although the structure of delusion itself is never accidental, it reflects the patient's deep feelings and attitudes in a transformed and camouflaged form.

It is surprising that there are very interesting studies of the inner world of "schizophrenics" [4], but the authors never get to the point of linking the content of delusions or hallucinations with certain features of the patient's real experiences and relationships. Although similar work was carried out by K. Jung in the clinic of the famous psychiatrist Bleuler [2].

For example, if a person with schizophrenia is convinced that his thoughts are being eavesdropped, then this may be due to the fact that he was always afraid that his parents would recognize his “bad” thoughts. Or he felt so defenseless that he wanted to withdraw into his thoughts, but even there he did not feel safe. Maybe the fact is that he really had spiteful and other bad thoughts directed at his parents, and he was very afraid that they would find out about this, etc. But most importantly, he was convinced that his thoughts obey external forces or are available to external forces, which in fact corresponds to the abandonment of his own will, even in the field of thinking.

One young man, close in his condition to this disease (the one who drew a robot with antennas on his head as a drawing of a person), assured me that there are two centers of power in the world, one is himself, the second is three girls whom he once visited in the hostel. There is a struggle between these centers of power, because of which everyone (!) Now has insomnia. Even earlier he told me a story about how these girls laughed at him, which really hurt him, it was clear that he liked these girls. Do I need to clarify the true background of his crazy ideas?

The hatred of the “schizophrenic” towards himself has as its reverse side the “frozen” needs [7] for love, understanding and intimacy. On the one hand, he gave up the hope of achieving love, understanding and intimacy, on the other hand, this is what he most dreams of. The schizophrenic still hopes to receive the love of a parent and does not believe that this is impossible. In particular, he tries to earn this love by literally following the parental instructions given to him in childhood.

However, the mistrust generated by distorted relationships in childhood does not allow for rapprochement, openness is frightening. Constant inner disappointment, dissatisfaction and the ban on intimacy give rise to a feeling of emptiness and hopelessness. If some kind of closeness has arisen, it acquires the meaning of a supervalue, and with its loss, the final collapse of the psychic world occurs. The "schizophrenic" constantly asks himself: "Why?.." - and does not find an answer. He never felt good and does not know what it is. You will hardly find such people among the "schizophrenics" who at least have ever been truly happy, and they project their unhappy past into the future, and therefore their despair has no limit.

Self-hatred results in low self-esteem, and low self-esteem leads to further development of self-denial. Conviction in one's own insignificance can generate, as a protective form, confidence in one's own greatness, excessive pride, and a sense of godlikeness.

The third principle, which is constant inhibition of feelings, is related to the first and second, because the restraint occurs due to the habit of obeying, constantly controlling oneself, and also due to the fact that the feelings are too strong to be expressed. In fact, the schizophrenic is deeply convinced that he is not able to release these feelings, since it will simply devastate him. In addition, while maintaining these feelings, he can continue to be offended, hate, accuse someone, expressing them, he takes a step towards forgiveness, but he just does not want this. The young woman mentioned at the beginning of the article and who was holding back "a cry that could cut mountains like a laser" was by no means going to release this cry. “How can I let him out,” she said, “if this scream is my whole life ?!”

Restraint of feelings leads, as already mentioned, to chronic overstrain of the muscles of the body, as well as to holding the breath. The muscular carapace prevents the free flow of energy through the body [6] and increases the feeling of stiffness. The shell can be so strong that not a single massage therapist is able to relax it, and even in the mornings, when the body is relaxed in ordinary people, in these patients (but not only in them) the body can be tense "like a board", and nails bite in the palm of your hand.

The flow of energy corresponds to the image of a river or stream (this image also reflects the relationship with the mother and oral problems). If an individual in his fantasies sees a cloudy, very cold and narrow stream, then this indicates serious psychological problems (Leiner's catatim-imaginative therapy). What do you say if he sees a narrow stream, all covered with a crust of ice? At the same time, a whip hits this ice, from which bloody streaks remain on the ice!

However, "schizophrenics" can both suppress (restrain) and repress their feelings. Therefore, schizophrenics who suppress their feelings develop so-called "positive" symptoms (voiced thoughts, dialogue of voices, withdrawal or insertion of thoughts, imperative voices, etc.) [10]. At the same time, for those who displace, “negative” symptoms come to the fore (loss of drives, affective and social isolation, depletion of vocabulary, internal emptiness, etc.). The former have to constantly fight their feelings, the latter drive them out of their personality, but weaken themselves and devastate.

By the way, this explains why antipsychotic drugs, as the same Fuller Torrey writes [9, p. 247], are effective in combating “positive” symptoms and have almost no effect on “negative” symptoms (lack of will, autism, etc.)) and reveals what their action actually consists of. Antipsychotic drugs have essentially only one purpose - to suppress the emotional centers in the patient's brain. By suppressing emotions, they help the schizophrenic achieve what he already strives to do, but he does not have the strength to do it. As a result, his struggle with feelings is facilitated and "positive" symptoms as a means and expression of this struggle are no longer necessary. That is, plus the symptoms are insufficiently suppressed feelings that burst to the surface against the will of the patient!

If the schizophrenic has pushed his feelings out of the intrapersonal psychological space, then the suppression of emotions with the help of drugs does not add anything to this. Emptiness does not disappear, because nothing is already there. It is necessary first to return these feelings, after which their suppression with drugs could have an effect. Autism and lack of will cannot disappear when emotions are suppressed; rather, they can even intensify, since they reflect the detachment from the emotional world, which is the basis of the individual's mental energy, which has already taken place within the individual's mental world. Minus symptoms are the result of repression of feelings, lack of energy!

Also, from this point of view, one can explain another "mystery", which is that schizophrenia practically does not occur in patients with rheumatoid arthritis [9]. Rheumatoid arthritis also refers to "unsolved" diseases, but in fact it is a psychosomatic disease caused by the hatred of the individual for his own body or feelings (in my practice there was such a case). Schizophrenia, on the other hand, is hatred of one's personality, of oneself as such, and it rarely happens that both variants of hatred occur together. Hatred is, after all, akin to accusation, and if an individual blames his body for all his troubles (for example, that it does not correspond to the ideals of his beloved parent), then he is unlikely to blame himself as a person.

The outward expression of any emotion in a schizophrenic, both in the case of suppression and in the case of repression, is sharply limited and this gives the impression of emotional coldness and alienation. At the same time, an invisible "fight of giants" takes place in the inner world of the individual, none of which is able to win, and most of the time they are in a state of "clinching" friend and cannot strike the enemy). Therefore, the experiences of other people are perceived by the "schizophrenic" as completely insignificant in comparison with his internal problems, he cannot give an emotional reaction to them and gives the impression of being emotionally dull.

The "schizophrenic" does not perceive humor, since humor is the embodiment of spontaneity, an unexpected change in the perception of a situation, he also does not allow spontaneity. Some schizoid individuals have confessed to me that they do not find it funny when someone tells jokes, they just imitate laughter when it should be. They also usually have great difficulty in having an orgasm and satisfaction from sex. Therefore, there is almost no joy in their life. They do not live in the present moment, surrendering to feelings, but look at themselves aloof from the outside and assess: "Did I really enjoy it or not?"

However, despite the strongest feelings, they are not aware of them and project them into the outside world, believing that someone is persecuting them, manipulating them against their will, reading their thoughts, etc. This projection helps to not be aware of these feelings and to be alienated from them. They create fantasies that acquire the status of reality in their minds. But these fantasies always touch on one "fad", in other areas they can reason quite sensibly and give themselves an account of what is happening. This "fad" actually corresponds to the deep emotional problems of the individual, it helps them to adapt to this life, endure unbearable pain and prove to themselves the unprovable, become free, remaining a "slave", become great, feeling insignificant, rebel against "injustice" life and take revenge on "everyone" by punishing oneself.

Purely statistical research cannot confirm or refute this point of view. There is a need for statistics of depth-psychological studies of the inner world of these patients. Superficial data will be deliberately false due to the secrecy of both the patients themselves and their relatives, as well as due to the formality of the questions themselves.

However, the psychotherapeutic study of schizophrenia is extremely difficult. Not only because these patients do not want to reveal their inner world to a doctor or psychologist, but also because conducting this research, we unwittingly hurt the strongest experiences of these people, which may have undesirable consequences for their health. Yet such research can be done carefully, for example, using directed imagination, projective techniques, dream analysis, etc.

The proposed concept can be considered too simplified, but we desperately need a fairly simple concept that would explain the onset of schizophrenia, and which could explain the origin of certain symptoms of this disease, and would also be potentially testable. There are very complex psychoanalytic theories of schizophrenia, but they are very difficult to state and just as difficult to test [10].

The ingenious domestic psychotherapist Nazloyan, who uses mask therapy to treat such cases, believes that such a diagnosis is not needed at all. He says that the main disorder in the so-called "schizophrenics" is a violation of self-identity, which generally coincides with our opinion. With the help of a mask, which he sculpts, looking at the patient, he returns to the latter the personality he had lost. Therefore, the completion of treatment according to Nazloyan is catharsis, which the "schizophrenic" is experiencing. He sits down in front of his portrait (a portrait can be created for several months), talks to him, cries or hits the portrait … This lasts two or three hours, and then recovery comes … These stories confirm the emotional theory of schizophrenia and the fact that the disease is based on negative self-attitude …

At the end, I want to give an example of an in-depth study of the feeling of fear in a sick young woman in remission (it should be noted that she was fully aware of the seriousness of her illness, but did not want to be treated with medical means). She told how, as a child, her mother constantly beat her, and she hid, but her mother found and beat her for no reason.

I asked her to imagine what her fear looks like. She replied that fear was like a white, quivering jelly (this image, of course, reflected her own state). Then I asked, who or what is this jelly afraid of? After thinking, she replied that what caused the fear was a huge gorilla, but this gorilla clearly did nothing against the jelly. This surprised me and I asked her to play the role of a gorilla. She got up from the chair, entered the role of this image, but said that the gorilla does not attack anyone, instead for some reason she wanted to go up to the table and knock on it, while she imperatively said several times: "Come out!" "Who's going out?" I asked. "A little child comes out." she replied. "What does a gorilla do?" “Doesn't do anything, but she wants to take this child by the legs and smash his head against the wall!” Was her answer.

I would like to leave this episode without comment, it speaks for itself, although of course there are people who can write off this case simply at the expense of the schizophrenic fantasy of this young woman, especially since she herself then began to deny that it was a gorilla - her image mother, that in fact, she was the desired child for the mother, etc. This was in complete contradiction with what she said before, with many details and details, so it is easy to understand that such a turn in her mind was a way to protect herself from unwanted understanding.

Is it because our science has not yet discovered the essence of schizophrenia, because it also defends itself against unwanted understanding.

I think that the list of references is not needed, but still I will give the sources on which I relied.

Literature.

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2. Brill A. Lectures on psychoanalytic psychiatry. - Yekaterinburg, 1998.

3. Kaplan G. I., Sadok B. J. Clinical psychiatry. - M., 1994.

4. Kempinski A. Psychology of schizophrenia. - S.-Pb., 1998.

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6. Reich V. Analysis of personality. - S.-Pb., 1999.

7. Sweet K. Jump off the hook. - S.-Pb., 1997.

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