Abstract: Authors differed in their opinions as to the role of psychotherapy in the treatment of schizophrenia. According to current theories of etiology and personality, it was believed that psychotherapy is important and indispensable in the treatment of chronic schizophrenia, and a synthetic therapy method was devised by combining drug and occupational therapies. 60 paranoid schizophrenics, divided into 3 groups of 20 patients each, received the treatment, successively the therapy lasted 16 weeks for each group. The duration of their disease averaged 5.3 years. This article is to describe the psychotherapeutic method and to analyse its effects on the disease.There were 3 therapeutic stages: 1) the stage of active delusion, 2) the stage of unstable delusion, and 3) the stage of disappearance of delusion. In accord to the different stages of the disease, we administered group psychotherapy in combination with individual psychotherapy which consisted of different procedures and contents. At the end of the treatment 35(58.3%) recovered, 18(30%) much improved, 6(10%) improved, and only one case remained unchanged. The patients' responses to psychotherapy in each stage were analyzed, and psychotherapy proved to be an indispensable treatment both in the first stage and in the third stage, and also during the course of remission.A tentative theory concerning the role of psychotherapy was formulated, believing that an optimum relationship should be established between the doctor and the patient, thus the former's therapeutic measures can exercise effective influence upon the patient's psychological state. This conduce to the disappearance of pathological state. As the effect of psychotherapy, changes appeared in the patient's, relationship system which reduced the peculiarities of his original psychological state and improved his maladjustments to the environment.

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