Worlds of Psychotic People: Wanderers, 'Bricoleurs' and Strategists

Throughout the ages anthropologists, philosophers, historians, psychiatrists and psychotics themselves have discussed and describes 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?Worlds of Psychotic Peoplebrings a fresh twenty-first 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 the perspective of the mental patient some of the fears and hopes that mark an individual's encounter with the fixed reality-structures of a clinical mental ward. Introducing the concept of the psychotic patient as wanderer through culture, creating a 'bricolage' reality from the materials at hand, Els van Dongenaims to open up the often secretive exchanges that take place between therapists and patients, and to seek new meanings and interpretations from these for use thin the therapeutic endeavor.

Els van Dongen is a senior staff member at the Medical Anthropology unit of the University of Amsterdam.