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Psychosis is overwhelmingly understood by dominant mental health systems as a problem of the individual: a disease, deficit, or disorder, to be treated by medication and, less frequently, psychotherapy. An enhanced way of approaching psychosis is not merely to conceptualize it as something that exists solely within a person, but as something that emerges in relationship with the social link. In the aftermath of World War II, a group of French psychiatrists reconceptualized psychosis (or “madness”) as most importantly a social phenomenon, rooted in experiences of intensive social alienation. This movement considered psychotherapeutic treatment to be, foremost, a process of “disalienation”: the undoing of profound social disconnection through community and social engagement. Individual treatment was thus integrated with social treatment, aimed at healing both the individuals within a therapeutic community and the community itself.
ISPS-US’s landmark 25th Annual Conference seeks to re-engage with this thinking as we face a resurgence of policies and practices that further entrench states of alienation, including the expansion of civil psychiatric commitment, and a broader social context in which many, particularly those most affected by racial and economic inequities, displacement, or homelessness, are pushed further to the margins. Appreciation of the social determinants of psychological suffering leads us to an essential question: Rather than being incomprehensible, is psychosis, in fact, an expression of society’s fractures?
New York City serves as a powerful setting for grappling with these questions. As a city of over 8 million people with immense diversity, New York is paradoxically a very social place, and also one of potentially profound social isolation. Many come because their “home” was untenable due to war, disaster, oppression, or simply not fitting in. Therefore, to be a New Yorker is often to be an outsider, bound with other New Yorkers by difference and the attempt to find one’s footing in community. In this way, New York serves as a metaphor for understanding psychosis and the social link – not only as an individual experience, but as something that unfolds within the tensions of connection, disconnection, and the search for belonging.
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John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 524 W 59th St,New York, New York, Manhattan, United States
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Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.