with all psychoses but are most prominent with paranoia. Doubts concerning sexual identity, exaggerated sexual needs, altered sexual performance and fears of intimacy are prominent in schizophrenia. The process of regression in schizophrenia is accompanied by increased self-fixation, isolation, and masturbatory behavior. The schizophrenic person finds himself or herself in a painful dilemma. He or she retreats from personal intimacy or closeness because of the intense fear that closeness will be followed by ensuing rejection or harm. This retreat from intimacy leaves the person lonely and isolated.. The dopamine theory of schizophrenia is based on the action of the neuroleptic drugs, better known as antipsychotic drugs. Neuroleptics are the drugs of choice for treating the symptoms of schizophrenia. The neuroleptics are believed to block the dopamine receptors in the brain, limiting the activity of dopamine and reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia. Amphetamines, just the opposite, enhance dopamine transmission. Amphetamines produce an excess of dopamine in the brain and can provoke the symptoms of schizophrenia in a schizophrenic client. In large doses, amphetamines can simulate symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in a nonschizophrenic person. Some symptoms of schizophrenia are due basically to hyperdopaminergic activity. Other symptoms, such as apathy and poverty of thought, are related to neuronal loss. Drugs reduce most of the disturbing, disorganizing, and destructive aspects of the schizophrenic person’s behavior. Drugs, however, do not improve or affect the fundamental stupor, unresponsiveness, lack of ambition, and symbolic defects....
