In the forests of the night: Psychodynamic treatment of schizophrenia through the lens of Matte-Blanco’s bi-logic.

Abstract

The title of this article takes its inspiration from Blake's "The Tyger" and the notion of "fearful symmetry" as a way to conceptualize the inner world and experience of psychosis. Ignacio Matte-Blanco's work with bi-logic and symmetrical experience can provide an invaluable matrix for beginning to understand the language and symbols of psychotic thought process while working collaboratively with those who are often regarded as untreatable. In seeing psychosis as a symmetrical fusion of time, space, and identity, the authors have been able to step into "the forest of the night" and create a point of highly personal therapeutic contact through language, art, and ritual. The authors will provide case material to highlight this therapy.

Contrasting metacognitive profiles and their association with negative symptoms in groups with schizophrenia, early psychosis and depression in a Russian sample.

“…This may be consistent with a range of older psychodynamic accounts of psychosis which the processes by which persons and others are unique beings are damaged and with the loss of genuine uniqueness, nothing if left to meaningfully distinguish the larger meaning of one activity from another. Examples of this include the work of Matte-Blanco's as presented by Saks & Tsepilovan (2019) and Arieti's (1955) characterization of schizophrenia as a disorder of symbolization. Of note, rival hypotheses cannot be ruled out including the possibility that negative symptoms cause metacognitive deficits or that both are the result of underlying psychophysiological processes not assessed here.…”