Summary:
For the development of psychiatry both empirical research and the development of
the hermeneutic stance is of importance. In the view presented in this article,
psychoanalysis can offer an adequate frame of reference for hermeneutic activities.
It also offers unique insight in the doctor-patient relationship and can help to
develop in students, both at medical school and postgraduate level, an attitude that
favours and facilitates listening to the patients' inner experience. Recent developments
in psychoanalytic theory that are relevant to psychiatry are the object relations
theories of Mahler and her school and the self psychology as developed by
Kohut a. o. The recent reformulation of a psychoanalytic model of schizophrenia illustrates
these developments.