THE death of Dr Aaron Esterson, at the age of 75, marks the passing of a psychiatrist who challenged the orthodox psychiatric view of the nature of schizophrenia and its treatment. Throughout his professional life he maintained his individualistic, strongly principled contribution to psychotherapy and to the prevailing social attitude to mental illness in general.

Born in Glasgow in 1925, the son of an immigrant who died two years later, Aaron had a difficult time in achieving his education. From primary school he won a bursary to Allan Glen's School and thereafter was employed in various temporary occupations before enlisting in the Royal Navy. He served in wartime as a wireless operator on a minesweeper, and proceeded on demobilisation to the study of medicine at Glasgow University, where he graduated in 1951.

Some special circumstances associated with his early training and experience in psychiatry may be seen to have had a determining influence on his later career. As a registrar at the Department of Psychological Medicine in the Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, he had early experience of treatment of mental illness outside a mental hospital, at a time when Scotland was far ahead of England in this respect.

In the field of psychotherapy, a dominant influence derived from Freudian teaching and, importantly for Dr Esterson, Professor Rodger, who headed the department, had, with members of his staff, engaged for some years in a trial of group psychotherapy in the treatment of schizophrenia. Also, Dr Esterson's hospital attachment coincided with that of another young psychiatrist, Dr R D Laing, who had participated in the above-mentioned group therapy. They had several experiences in common: having known economic hardship in their early days and having started medical studies after military service. They both turned their backs on the biological aspects of the illness schizophrenia, in which they were mainly interested.

It was wholly fitting that as a medico-psychological reformer, Dr Esterson, like Dr Laing, should find an atmosphere congenial to his ideas in the cultural climate of London in the ''swinging sixties''. The greatest impact was made, however, outside the medical establishment.

Dr Esterson collaborated with Dr Laing in the production of Sanity, Madness, and the Family (1964) which specifically refers to the families of 11 patients, diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, who were treated in a family context, with recordings of treatment interviews, over a period of five years. Evidence was drawn from these records to demonstrate that the family atmosphere of the patients predisposed to - and, according to the authors, ''caused'' - what society called ''madness''.

Dr Esterson's next book, The Leaves of Spring - a Study in the Dialectics of Madness, is an illuminating idiographic study, devoted for the major part to the painstaking, detailed study of a patient and her family, investigated and treated as the interacting elements of a unity. Among his published papers were Families, Breakdown, and Psychiatry, The Helping Professions, and Orientation. A film, The Space Between Words by Robert Graef, was based on Dr Esterson's practice.

Dr Esterson was not one who found compromises easy or, indeed, desirable. He saw schizophrenic patients as victims, and as a result the extended family and associates tended to be drawn into treatment. This led to his giving up a clinical appointment within the National Health Service as early as 1962 to pursue his clinical activity and research independently.

Although his views could involve him in hard-hitting criticism of establishment opinion in psychiatry, Aaron Esterson was admired and respected for his fidelity to his principles and his ethical integrity.

A sensitive, compassionate understanding of the paradoxes frequently found within close family relations formed the background for the existentialist philosophy which informed his therapeutic practice.

Although, in retrospect, it can be said that the diagnostic net of schizophrenia can be shown to have been cast significantly wider in England than in Scotland (and much wider still in the US) in the 1960s, at the time when the anti-psychiatry movement made its greatest impact, this does not raise any question as to the validity of Dr Esterson's approach to those disturbed patients whom he rigorously treated and helped.

An outstanding product of his time, Dr Esterson took delight in teaching younger colleagues. He made his mark on the study of family dynamics and the potential for serious malfunction in the home in a way that ensures his place in the history of psychotherapy.