Overview

This volume is dedicated to Theodore Lidz and Ruth W. Lidz, as was the conference on the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia held on April 9 and 10, 1979, at which the materials here published were presented. This 1979 sym- posium replicated in some respects the one held at Yale University thirty years earlier, at a time when psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients was viewed with much optimism and enthusiasm. Ruth and Ted Lidz contributed to this earlier symposium also, emphasizing in their paper the intense mother-patient bond as a therapeutic issue. Since then, considerable strides have been made in the treatment of schizophrenic patients. The introduction of psychopharmacologic agents, the development of family therapy, and more sophisticated methods in com- munity-based care for such patients, all have had important impacts. Psychotherapy with schizophrenics as such has remained a rather limited practice, partly because it is difficult and demanding of therapists' time and personal investment, and partly because documenting its effectiveness on a statistically or epidemiologically valid plane has eluded us.