Abstract
I end here with a brief argument to show the connection of the holistic conception of the individual with an account of mental crisis and schizophrenia. This chapter is included to show that our attempts at forming coherent self-descriptions, as part of an ongoing project of self-realisation, do not always proceed smoothly. On the contrary, these attempts often result not in autonomy but in alienation and mental crisis. It attempts to point out a line of continuity between healthy but struggling individuals and schizophrenics that might help us sympathise with and better understand their plight as a thoroughly human one. It is also included to show the potential of the ideas outlined here for further fruitful interdisciplinary applications.
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Notes
- 1.
Laing (1965), 78.
- 2.
Ibid., 17.
- 3.
- 4.
Laing (1965), 24.
- 5.
Ibid., 19.
- 6.
I do not wish to sound naive regarding the role of biology in human mentality. It would be as much of a mistake to overemphasise the social dimension of mind as to overemphasise the biological dimension. For a sensitive treatment of various mental ailments that aims to incorporate both biological and social dimensions, see Gillett (2009).
- 7.
Winfield (1983), 174.
- 8.
Though some lines of commitment may risk coming into conflict, they may never in fact do so. For this reason identities of varying degrees of unity also exhibit varying degrees of precariousness.
- 9.
The question as to whether or not I am realising myself cannot be all or nothing, it must be a question of degree.
- 10.
I do not, of course, wish to dismiss the aspect of freedom which requires minimising interference to some suitable degree. See Chap. 1.
- 11.
Berlin (2002), 188.
- 12.
Laing charts in some detail the conflicted and confused interpersonal relationships that often exist within the family life alone, and which give rise to painful self-conceptions, via an exploration of numerous patient and patient-family interviews. See Laing and Esterson (1990).
- 13.
Taylor (1989), 27.
- 14.
Laing has written a series of ‘poems’ which try to give expression to the various knots we tie ourselves into when trying to form conceptions of a situation and of ourselves within those situations. See Laing (1972).
- 15.
For an illuminating and touching exploration of a schizophrenic individual’s relation to his schizophrenic society, see Wilson (1992), 117. Hilde Lindemann Nelson has offered an illuminating account of narrative identity, with careful attention paid to the stories we tell about subjugated groups, including women, mothers, gypsies and transsexuals, and the oppression these stories create. See Nelson (2001).
- 16.
I believe that something like this is what Freud is trying to work out in some of his work. See Freud (2004).
- 17.
Ibid., 101.
- 18.
I am wary of being misunderstood on this point. The term ‘responsible’ may have layers of meaning that can be picked apart. To be responsible necessarily involves engaging one’s agency in some way, but it need not always involve that further aspect, the aspect that tends to charge a person with being guilty, or punishable, or the suitable target of unkind words and so on. I only wish to make sure that the subject’s agency is not lost here. See Pickard and Ward (2013).
- 19.
Nelson talks about communities of choice as a means to this sort of end. See Nelson (2001).
- 20.
- 21.
Ibid, 42.
- 22.
Ibid, 52–53.
- 23.
Ibid, 69.
- 24.
See Chap. 3 of this work.
- 25.
Hegel (1991), 38.
- 26.
Laing (1965), 141.
- 27.
Ibid., 139.
- 28.
Ibid., 133.
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Whittingham, M. (2018). Freedom and Schizophrenia. In: The Self and Social Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77246-2_8
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