Peer-professional first-person account: schizophrenia from the inside--phenomenology and the integration of causes and meanings

Abstract

An autobiographical account of the author's psychotic crisis blends his own insights with relevant extant research on schizophrenia. As an investigator in the fields of paranoia and schizophrenia research, who has himself been psychotic, this may help to link the narratives of professionals and patients. The episode is interpreted as having been precipitated by abuse of a person with susceptibilities to psychosis in terms of his attentional style, poor context apprehension, high emotional intensity, and poor emotion and arousal modulation. The most effective therapies proved to be a blend of haloperidol medication, cognitive and psychodynamic insight, and a total change of social scenario to an ambience less abusive of feminine men (the author used to be a transvestite). Throughout the narrative presented, it is clear that qualities of experiential life were not merely causally impotent responses to brain processes but themselves inducing of critical decisions and of outlook on life that played a large part in the eventuation of, and recovery from, the psychotic state.