It doesn t let people do what they want to do with their lives. It interferes with their humanity. It robs them of their dignity, and deprives them of their happiness. To accept responsibility for the treatment of psychotic patients is a commitment many therapists do not understand. It is always easier to blame the patient for not getting better.
Nobody likes to look inside and see their own pathology mirrored by the patient s psychosis.
Nobody likes to experience the feelings of failure and fatigue as the patient appears to win round after round. And, most importantly, nobody wants to expose the incompetence they feel when they are asked to take on the well rehearsed pathology of the veteran schizophrenic. When I first saw Torina, she was standing up in a huge cavernous room with an aide sitting close by. Her arms and legs were in restraints and she was talking to herself. She was at the end of the room and could see what was going on from every angle.