Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self

With advances in medical technology and with many large scale, longitudinal studies underway, social and biological science have built a convincing case that the varieties of madness subsumed by the label schizophrenia are created, fueled, and sustained by genetic, biochemical and environmental factors. However, even with increasingly detailed explanatory models it is possible to overlook how suffering persons actually experience their symptoms and navigate their lives.

This book is unique in focusing on the experiences of those who have schizophrenia, and who must make sense of and live with this condition. It explores how schizophrenia disrupts person's experiences of themselves as beings in the world and how that disruption poses enduring barriers to recovery - barriers not reducible to issues of social justice or biology. After presenting a model of how disturbances in self-experience are related to but not identical with symptoms and dysfunction, it looks at the implications for the development of therapies that might provide greater opportunities for recovery.

“This book is full of the determination, patience, care, skill, and affection required of clinicians caring for people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. … [A]n extremely valuable contribution to the psychological treatment of schizophrenia which should take its rightful place, distinct in its emphasis but connected in its roots, within the broader psychological tradition of the psychotherapy of psychosis.” Michael Garett, Psychosis

“…this book has made it possible to put the self-experience of schizophrenia at the heart of the debate.” Edward Willatt, Metapsychology

“I found Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self to be a rewarding read, and recommend it to students, researchers and practitioners who are both interested in understanding the experience of schizophrenia and in helping people with schizophrenia achieve their full potential.” Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal