The Development of Boundary Disturbances in Families with a Schizophrenic Adolescent

Abstract

Shortly after emerging from a psychotic episode, Sven wrote in a letter to his therapist:

So this psychosis came over me. I had a kind of moment of revelation which drove me mad. I realised that I have always hidden my real personality behind a facade. My actions were always coloured by fears of life and death. I was always pretending to myself and never wanted to grow up and take responsibility for myself. There is only one wisdom in life: every human being goes from A to B, from birth to death ... Basically, life is just a giant illusion machine, people live in the past and in the future, they’ve sold themselves to money and material goods. When I realised that material things and illusions come to the same thing in the end, I had a kind of revelation; I was filled with a feeling of warmth. As if I had suddenly discovered my own soul. They both belong together, the dark, the material, and the light, the soul. The one can’t exist without the other. But suddenly I noticed that the boundary between the two had gone, that I couldn’t keep them apart any more. Now I need to get back into the material, and that’s what the hospital is there for. “Structure and organise your thoughts” is the motto of the day. No matter what happens, even after a crisis, life goes on.