There is hope for even chronic cases of “schizophrenia”

Ron Unger is the best blogger I know who can decode schizophrenia to the outside observer and offer  healing words of wisdom. His most recent post is a must read. It’s a lengthy look at what Carl Jung believed about schizophrenia. For people who want to know if there is hope for people with ” schizophrenia,” here’s what Jung wrote:

In regard to the latter (i.e., severe cases), Jung stated: “It would be a mistake to suppose that more or less suitable methods of treatment exist. Theoretical assumptions in this respect count for next to nothing. Also, one would do well not to speak of ‘methods’ at all. The thing that really matters is the personal commitment, the serious purpose, the devotion, indeed the self-sacrifice, of those who give the treatment. I have seen results that were truly miraculous, as when sympathetic nurses and laymen were able, by their courage and steady devotion, to re-establish psychic rapport with their patients and so achieve quite astounding cures” (p.265).

Jung then addresses certain countertransference issues:

“But even so one can bring about noticeable improvements in severe schizophrenics, and even cure them, by psychological treatment, provided that one’s own constitution holds out [in my own experience, I have had situations where I continued the long-term psychotherapy of several patients in inpatient state hospital settings, later transferred into my practice, in which I was physically attacked, reported to have sexually molested the patient , etc, to very positive outcomes, e.g., to the point where family thought their family member was originally misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, never having to return to the state hospital after many years of residing there, etc]. This question is very much to the point, because the treatment not only demands uncommon efforts but may also induce psychic infections in a therapist who himself has a rather unstable disposition. I have seen no less than three cases of induced psychoses in treatments of this kind” (pp. 265-266).