Understanding Schizophrenia

How, as therapists, do we approach schizophrenia?

The study of schizophrenia itself transcends psychiatry because no other condition in human pathology permits therapists to delve so deeply into what is specific to human nature.

In dealing with schizophrenia, the therapist must also deal with a panoramic spectrum of the human condition and its cardinal problems, including the dichotomies of truth and illusion, creativity and bizarreness, grandiosity and self-abnegation, and a surrender to love and hate or imperviousness to those feelings.

To answer the question "What is schizophrenia?" Dr. Garmon addresses three basic aspects of the condition. How can it be recognized? How can it be interpreted? How can it be treated? He not only presents a thorough view of the therapeutic and theoretical history of the treatment of schizophrenia, he also keeps in the forefront of his presentation the notion that one is treating with compassion an individual who has all the complexities that basic human nature can provide.

In this erudite, yet practical volume, Dr. Garmon has drawn from his thirty years of experience diagnosing and treating patients. He has also written with an optimism of his own and of other therapists that he can give to his readers an understanding of schizophrenia sufficient to permit a totally successful treatment of many patients and a marked improvement in many others.