Life Writing and Schizophrenia: Encounters at the Edge of Meaning (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9789042036840)

How do you write your life story when readers expect you not to make sense? How do you write a case history that makes sense when, face to face with schizophrenia, your ability to tell a diagnostic story begins to fall apart? This book examines work in several genres of life writing-autobiography, memoir, case history, autobiographical fiction-focused either on what it means to live with schizophrenia or what it means to understand and 'treat' people who have received that diagnosis. Challenging the romanticized connection between literature and madness, Life Writing and Schizophrenia explores how writers who hear voices and experience delusions write their identities into narrative, despite popular and medical representations of schizophrenia as chaos, violence, and incoherence. The study juxtaposes these narratives to case histories by clinicians writing their encounters with those diagnosed with schizophrenia, encounters that call their own narrative authority and coherence into question.

Author: Mary Elene Wood
ISBN-10: 9042036842
ISBN-13: 9789042036840
Publisher: Brill
Language: English
Published: 01/01/2013
Pages: 353
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.12lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d