I picked up this book nearly at random off the psychology shelf at Elliott Bay. I was thinking about cult leaders and what it takes to believe in something so thoroughly, you lose your sense of reality. So I wanted to read about insanity. Started reading the book, on the first page, it starts talking about existential phenomenology. And I remember, from my first conversation with my new therapist, that's the same sort of framework they use, and I start to see the parallels: this book is about approaching mental patients in an attempt to understand the existential conditions that have caused them to develop psychosis, rather than neatly fitting them into an "objective" set of metrics that can be "observed" and "diagnosed." Well, as it turns out, this has been more of an exercise in self-therapy than any sort of externally-focused research.
Some takeaways:
- Ontological insecurity—the basis for manifestations of mental illness.
- Split between a "real," inner self and a "false," outer self which interacts with the world. The more "fake" the external presentation becomes, the more impoverished in the internal self becomes: it starts living on fantasy rather than actual feedback from the outside world. Eventually this can lead to a total breakdown which "seems" to come out of nowhere. The internal, "real self" has been going insane while the outer false self keeps up appearances. The moment of "going insane" is actually a moment of "being yourself"
- another one