Milton Rokeach (1918–1988)

Fascinating not as a psychological experiment, and, due to the insuperable solipsism of schizophrenia, only somewhat as a study in group dynamics, I enjoyed this unique book for the wealth of wild and weird expressions of psychotic creativity. I’m not sure you can call them insights into the subjects’ mental state but the speech and writings of Christs Joseph and, especially, Leon — with his Madame Yeti Woman, his squelch chambers, his morphodites — are like the best art, perennially surprising, provoking, allusive, and somehow underpinned by a guiding structure or framework. It feels grubby somehow, peeping at these cracked minds, but I couldn’t look away. As an experiment it was nugatory, and obviously unethical, but as a book for reading it’s very excellent.… (mais)

The background story of this is intriguing and interesting— three men with different backgrounds, each believing they‘re Christ, are intentionally brought together in several group meetings, where they reside at Ypsilanti State Hospital (early 1960s). They are all diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics.

However, this is fully a case study with more detail than I wanted/needed. Additionally, some of the approaches taken then would be questionable today, something that the author (who ran the study) acknowledges in his afterword penned 20 years later after the study's conclusion.

Still curious to see the movie based on this book.… (mais)