Private and public in the lives of chronic schizophrenic patients

Abstract

This article argues that both the private and public spheres must be taken into account when analyzing the development and everyday reality of the mentally ill. Private and public are two poles whose reciprocal relationship constitutes the form taken by a person's life. The interplay of both areas expresses how a person uses his thinking, feeling, and acting to relate to a real or imaginary audience. The psychosocial reality of a person is based on cooperation of the public and private selves. According to a central thesis of this essay, a loss of public presence leads in equal measure to a loss, rather than an increase, of private reality. An empirical study based on a sample of patients with chronic schizophrenia confirms this assumption by showing that such patients, under today's social conditions, develop lives characterized by a high degree of private reclusiveness. This is linked with an external and internal loss of life reality. Many patients, however, look for indirect and socially noncommittal forms of participating in public life without having to deny their private reality.