To say that we will never have a wonder cure for Schizophrenia is bullshit! To ask someone with thought disorder to verbally explain is nothing but torturous. So to have psychotherapy as the only other option is even more bullshit!
It is so important that we remember Manfred Bleuler's words, the father of Schizophrenia, that there is a normal psychological life within each schizophrenic person hidden behind the psychosis. After all, he was so right! Schizophrenia is bottling up angry sadness from hurt, being a storehouse of horrors. They are not caged in misperceptions as commonly believed, they face symbolic consequences of being maligned and ill-treated.
The same way a child's imaginary friend serves a pristine purpose, the Schizophrenic's hallucination serves to allay the imminent catastrophe delusion from continuously being battered with realism. In reality, the schizophrenic is the creative child. A child who does not need to be subdued by neuroleptics or longterm psychotherapy, which is treatment-refractory in Schizophrenia anyway. They need an alternative way of expressing since verbal language fail them. Art therapy is an encounter with the image and the psyche, our inner world represented outwardly by our creative expressions. Give him a pencil, color pens or watercolors and he will paint! The process of art therapy in Schizophrenia sessions reveal the vivid inner life, which words so often fail to bring forward. Therefore it expands communication and offers insight outside the scope of the reasoning mind.
As for psychiatry, it seems that it has learned nothing from the past nor present, seeing as they keep isolating schizophrenics from their external life through hospitalization. Now how would someone, with an already bottled up internal life of silent demons and internal chaos, possibly contribute from being isolated externally as well?? Art therapy may be one way of entangling the symbolic chaos of Schizophrenia, however it will not serve any good if psychiatry stays conservative and change avoidant.
By being a result of your past, all you may have is a bunch of yesterdays and perhaps very few tomorrows. You call out for something wider than this world can give. So naturally giving up may seem the most suitable. It is the easy way out, but see it is not a way out. It is the road to degenerating into further tragedy and misery.
Posts
