IJSP Number 4, 2022

73 new balance that would reduce the emotional tension through a global re- organization of feelings, thinking and behaviour. For instance, the peripherical structural elements of the system (such as ideas of persecution) become new central parameters around which the whole system is organized [6] Practically, schizophrenia patients have emotional expression deficits, difficulties in recognizing emotional facial expressions, difficulties in recognizing and classifying emotions and in anticipating hedonic experiences. At immediate emotional stimuli the patient with schizophrenia reacts identical with the normal population, but cannot keep in memory the emotional context and cannot use it subsequently [7]. In addition, the schizophrenic cannot make the distinction between relevant and irrelevant stimuli from the environment. From a psychodynamic perspective, the schizophrenic patient cannot make the difference between the external and the internal reality, having the experience of fusion between thoughts and feelings. The patient lives in a confusing, fragmented and terrifying world, a world that makes no sense at all [8]. A series of ego dysfunctions are present: regression and disorganization; confusion regarding the self and the fusion between the self and non-self (or the pati ent’s feeling that he himself is not real); disorders of self-esteem, the patient feeling like a failure; depersonalisation, with emotions felt as if lacking reality, separate from thoughts and actions; confusion regarding gender identity; fear about losing a certain part of the body and a distorted image regarding various body parts [8]. In this context, schizophrenia is dominated by three forms of impaired life story [9]: 1. Disorganized stories, consisting of continuous internal conversations, without any organizing structure; 2. Barren stories, in which the conversation with the self is minimal; and 3.Monologue stories, in which the self and life experiences are dominated by a single tyrannical force. Actually, psychosis is a state of alternate reality [10], and this alternate reality helps the mind create a more acceptable point of view on the self and the intersubjective reality, only this reality can be very far from the sphere of the common reality. Usually, people tolerate various aspects of the external reality and the conflict between these aspects, make compromises in order to manage these realities and combine them with aspects of the internal reality. But the schizophrenic cannot manage certain aspects of reality, so anxiety, disintegration, emotional pain and in the end delusions and hallucinations will appear [10]. Psychosis is therefore generated by a series of reality altering mechanisms, namely denial, projection, projective identification, splitting, fragmenting and impaired thinking. Through denial, the schizophrenic individual does not recognize aspects of the self and the internal reality, whilst through projection the undesirable features of the self are repositioned outside own person. Splitting is closely connected to denial and projection, meaning the separation of a part of self from the other parts - a denied or projected sub-personality for instance [10]. Therefore, the psychotic symptoms have a certain meaning that the psychotherapist must discover. By unraveling the meaning of psychotic symptoms,