Enigma of the mind

Robert Campbell, Enigma of the Mind

Anton Boisen, who emerged from schizophrenia to become a hospital chaplain, wrote in a memoir: "It seemed that a lot of new worlds were forming. There was music everywhere and rhythm and beauty. I heard what seemed to be a choir of angels. The next night I was visited, not by angels, but by a lot of witches. From the ventilator shaft I picked up paper black cats and broom-sticks and poke bonnets. I dinally not only worked out a way of checking the invation of the black cats, but I found some sort of process of regeneration which could be used to save other people." Eventually, wrote Boisen, "I found that by lying flat on the floor near the ventilator shaft, I could hear the most beautiful voice I had ever heard. It was the celebration of the Last Supper.

When Donald, an autistic boy, was asked to subtract four from ten, he replied, "I'll draw a hexagon"

A crucial aspect of this crippling amily atmosphere is what anthropologist Gregory Bateson called the double-bind phenomenon [...] Bateson wrote of a mother's visit to her schizophrenic son in the hospital: "He was glad to see her and impulsively put his arm around her shoulders, whereupon she stiffened. He withdrew his arm and she asked, 'Don't you love me anymore?' He then blushed, and she said, 'Dear, you must not be so easily embarrassed and afraid of your feelings.'