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Psychosis From a First-Person Perspective

In this article, I offer my first-person perspective on psychosis. To help clarify the devastating impact psychosis can have, I use notes I took during my psychotic episodes and combine them with my training as a philosopher. I describe psychosis as a dialectical process of aha- and anti-aha-experiences that destabilizes and completely undermines a personal framework.

Loosing Grip on Perspectives

The onset of my first psychotic episode started distinctively with changes in perspectives, gradually undermining my position. At first, this started with sudden new perspectives on problems I had been struggling with, later the world appeared in a new manner. Even the places and people most familiar to me did not look the same anymore. Yet, it was not a matter of hallucinations or delusions but implied changes in my lived world as a meaningful whole: the perspective I held on things and people.

The well-known account of the schizophrenic patient Anne, that the German psychiatrist Blankenburg describes, illustrates that losing grip on perspectives is not unique to my own experience with psychosis.

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