Poiesis and the Language of Schizophrenia^†

Angst: Origins of Anxiety and Depression, by Jeffrey P. Kahn, M.D.

“…The way the book positions these garden-variety psychiatric disorders in an evolutionary context could make our patients feel more included in the human family, a goal of the good old pre-neo-Kraepelinian days. In the same spirit, I argued in this journal (Forrest, 1965) that the formal properties of schizophrenic language were not strange but instead the same devices used by poets and politicians. I have been recommending this beneficial book as bibliotherapy for selected patients, with good response.…”

The ice cream stories: A study in normal and psychotic narrations

“…Psychiatrists have seen schizophrenic speech in various lights: exceptionally veiled language obliquely referring to homosexual or other tabooed desires (e.g., Laffal, 1965;Searles, 1967). Yet others have seen it as unusual poetry (e.g., Forrest, 1965Forrest, , 1976.…”

Clinical Psycholinguistics

“…One has an impression similar to that of listening to poetry-or rather the problem of listening to difficult poetry. Forrest (1965) made a similar analogy of the language of schizophrenia to the formation of poetry. Rochester's group noted that Cameron's (1944) asyndetic thinking represented a parallel concept.…”