An Existential Case Study of Madness: Encounters with Divine Affliction

This article presents an existential case study of a psychotic episode that the author experienced, focusing particularly on a phenomenological description of the actual process of psychic breakdown and subsequent recovery. Primary importance is placed on depicting this process as an empowering source of meaning formation as well as a spiritually transformative experience. The experience of psychosis is thus portrayed as a crisis of meaning in which the individual is challenged to reestablish an ontological ground and integrated sense of self through the recreation and deepening of personal existence. The presentation is a first-person narrative account, followed by an existential analysis of the experience’s value in terms of transformation and meaning creation, as well as a discussion of the existentialist sources in philosophy, psychology, and literature, that have contributed significantly to the author’s psycho-spiritual development.

A Strengths Perspective in Understanding and Working with Clients with Psychosis and Records of Violence

Clients labeled psychotic and having records of violence have long been seen as dangerous and resistant. Within a medical disease orientation, institutionalization, social control, and medication are applied in treating and rehabilitating these clients. By means of a case illustration, this article shows that violence and psychosis are understandable and predictable. From a strengths perspective, clients with psychosis and records of violence are victims of an oppressive social environment. Empathic understanding and normal interactions within a supportive social environment can rehabilitate them and help them to recover in the community.

Humanistic Testing and Assessment

Humanistic psychology’s tradition of controversy regarding the worth of psychological testing and assessment is reviewed. Assessment is defined as a process involving qualitative professional judgments integrating information from various sources and necessarily guiding all professional activities, whether performed explicitly or implicitly. Testing, as delineated from assessment, is just one potential source of assessment input that may provide formally gathered qualitative and/or quantitative information. Arguments against testing and assessment as legitimate activities within humanistic psychological practice are countered, concluding that testing and assessment can be congruent with humanistic ideals when focused on growth, subjectivity, agency, the centrality of the role of both the assessor and client as coparticipants, and a view of the person as a whole with inherent value.

Progressive Psychotherapists and the Psychiatric Survivor Movement

This article argues for and focuses on the importance of humanistic,radical, and other progressive psychotherapists finding ways of relating to the psychiatric survivormovement. Progressive cliniciansand survivor groups, it is suggested, have overlaps in values, a sharedobjection to institutional psychiatry, complementary strengths, andto varying extents, common cause. So there are strong reasons forconnection. Drawing on the survivor movement as a resource andreference point for psychiatrized clients and helping them connectwith the movement are identified as particularly importantdirections for practitioners to take. Recommended examples of moredirect involvement with the movement are supporting andendorsing statements made by movement groups, cowritingarticles, making room for movement involvement in clinicians’initiatives, contributing to movement initiatives, and mounting jointeducational programs and joint campaigns. All such actions areconditional on practitioners respecting survivor groups,acknowledging their expertise, not violating their trust, and supportingtheir struggle for self-determination.

Curtailing The Use Of Restraint In Psychiatric Settings

This article explains past and current theory and practice regarding the use of coercion with persons targeted for psychiatric treatment and outlines the benefits of reducing the use of force in psychiatric settings for consumers, staff, and the wider society. Resources are described for building explicitly noncoercive norms in a therapeutic community by establishing a coherent humanistic theoretical basis, with special attention to trauma theory. The article analyzes the causes of human aggression and the impact of violence on the healing process and describes case examples of nonviolent clinical settings. Appendices offer tips for practical application.

Enlightened or Delusional?

Psychological diagnosis faces unique challenges when used to differentiate nonpsychopathological religious/spiritual/transpersonal (R/S/T) experiences from those that might evidence psychopathology, particularly considering the diversity of such experiences and the value-laden assumptions inherent in most diagnostic practices. Theoretical and pragmatic problems related to the diagnostic category, Religious and Spiritual Problem, as contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are discussed. Attention is paid to identifying potential biases and errors in using, or failing to use, this diagnostic category, particularly as related to developing culturally sensitive diagnoses. Specific methods, including psychometric approaches, for evaluating R/S/T experiences that may range from healthy to psychopathological are reviewed and recommendations are presented for improving current diagnostic practices and furthering needed research.

To See or Not To See “Schizophrenia” and The Possibility of Full “Recovery”

Since the beginning of modern psychiatry, the diagnosis of “schizophrenia” has epitomized the idea of chronic, severe mental illness. This engaging article looks at the beliefs and practices of biological psychiatry regarding “schizophrenia.” Guiding beliefs, however flawed they might be, determine perception and action, and this is very true in psychiatry. There are, however, significant differences between belief and fact in psychiatric theory. The author examines these differences and presents research about the safety and efficacy failures of treatment, especially regarding the antipsychotic drugs. He reviews important dissident literature from both psychiatric survivors and professionals showing that recovery from extreme states, from “schizophrenia,” is quite possible. Although the standard psychiatric outlook for recovery from schizophrenia is virtually nil, the essay concludes with an inspiring story of musical artists who have demonstrated a reemergence from diagnoses of severe mental illness and treatment with antipsychotic drugs and electroshock.

Exploring the concept of recovery in schizophrenia

The concept of recovery in psychosis has gained much momentum in recent years in the UK. Current government policy describes its underpinning philosophy as the way forward for mental health services. Many mental health professionals now claim to embrace this concept yet fail to make the desired impact upon the care and treatment of individuals with schizophrenia. This article reviews some of the literature and explores what the concept of recovery means. The formal evidence will be augmented with personal accounts about recovery written by individuals who have schizophrenia. In doing so the main components that appear to have influenced the recovery process will be highlighted, and the implications for mental health nurses and practitioners will be discussed.

My transforming peak experience was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia

A clinical psychologist reveals how a breakthrough, transformational experience was perceived as a schizophrenic breakdown and led to his being placed on the back ward of a VA psychiatric hospital.