Paradox And Counterparadox : A New Model In The Therapy Of The Family In Schizophrenic Transaction

Paradox and Counterparadox introduces the English-speaking public to the first results of a research plan drawn up by the Milan Center for Family Studies at the end of 1971 and put into practice at the beginning of 1972. The book reports the therapeutic work carried out by the authors with fifteen families, five with children presenting serious psychotic disturbances, and ten with young adults diagnosed as schizophrenics in acute phase. Though accepting the Bleulerian term schizophrenia, by now in general use, the authors have used it to indicate not the sickness of an individual-as in the traditional medical model-but a peculiar pattern of communication inseparable from the other patterns of communication observable in the natural group (in this case, the family) in which it manifests itself.