Worlds Of Psychotic People

This book is about psychiatric patients and their subjective worlds. It is based on ethnographic research gathered at the psychiatric hospital of Saint Anthony's in the Netherlands over a period of five years. The book seeks to describe the manner in which psychiatric patients experience their subjective worlds.

Forty five years ago, we youngsters played an exciting if questionable game. In a large house on the corner of our street a crazy woman lived alone We left our marbles and our balls on the pavement and hid behind trees in the gardens, listening to her with pounding hearts. Six years ago, the psychotic patients of Saint Anthony's, a psychiatric hospital in the Netherlands, played an exciting game with me. Fascination with and curiosity about the world of madness is not only a child's pastime, it seems to be without limits. Throughout the ages anthropologists, philosophers, historians, psychiatrists and psychotics themselves have discussed and described the symptoms of madness. But how seriously should we take madness? Is there any truth in the old idea that psychotic people have access to a world of meaning which remains locked to others?;This volume brings a 21st-century voice to the lives of those with serious psychological disorders, focusing on the manner in which psychiatric patients experience their subjective worlds. Based on ethnographic research gathered at the psychiatric hospital of Saint Anthony's in the Netherlands over a period of five years, it seeks to describe fro Review: 'A valuable book providing emprirical evidence on pateints' encounter with therapeutic interventions to supplement the growing anthropological research on the experiential and sociocultural aspects of mental illness.' - Social Anthropology