It is possible to successfully treat FEP patients with fewer in-patient days and less neuroleptic medication than is usually recommended, when combined with intensive psychosocial treatment and support.

The study confirms the feasibility, clinically and economically, with a large scale application of "need-specific treatments" for first episode psychotic patients.

Private theories about psychosis, its background, and cure were studied using narratives of first-time psychotic patients and their therapists. Both patients and their therapists were interviewed on three occasions over a period of 1 1/2 years. Three cases were chosen as dyads in point in order to highlight different relations between the patient's and the therapist's private theories, different patterns of recovery from psychosis, and different outcomes. The cases are contrasted by paired comparisons. The study indicates that an awareness and joint discussion of incompatibilities between the two participants' private theories might be a substantial contribution to the process of recovery from psychosis.

No abstract

In a study of private theories of pathogenesis and cure, patients in psychoanalysis and their analysts were periodically interviewed. Two cases representing prematurely concluded psychoanalyses are investigated in detail. Double sets of private theories of cure were held by both parties. The wished-for and feared cure involved a profound transformation of the personality by ways of deep regression. An attainable and more limited cure included new ways of managing old problems in terms of coping and cognition, in particular new ways of thinking and reflecting upon interpersonal relationships and inner experiences. Both parties' mourning of the preferred but abandoned utopian theories of cure seems to be an important, even if not frequently observed, ingredient in the psychoanalytic process.