Interview with Gaetano Benedetti, M.D.

Abstract

Professor Gaetano Benedetti has been working as a psychoanalyst with individuals with a schizophrenic disorder for over 50 years in his capacity as psychotherapist, supervisor, and teacher. In this interview Professor Benedetti defines the basic psychological problems in schizophrenia. He and his younger colleague in the field of schizophrenia, Dr. Maurizio Peciccia, understand the illness to be the result of an interaction between possible neurobiological vulnerabilities, overwhelming affects, and a self lacking cohesion and integration. Specifically, they characterize the core psychological deficit in schizophrenia to be a deintegration of the separate and symbiotic selves of the patient, resulting in the oscillation between pathological symbiosis with the world and a defensive autistic-like retreat from object relations. Other topics discussed include: the therapeutic symbiosis; the transitional subject; progressive psychopathology; therapeutic counteridentification; the origins of schizophrenia; therapeutic images and psychotherapeutic transformation.