Recovery from psychosis: What’s love got to do with it?

Abstract

Of the various ways in which recovery‐oriented practice has been characterized in contrast to traditional care, this paper focuses on the dimension of care being “person‐centered” in order to explore in some depth its implications for transforming psychiatric practice. In order to be considered “person‐centered”, care must attend primarily to the person rather than to symptoms or to diagnosis. In addition to respecting the person’s autonomy, we suggest that “person‐centered” care also requires a re‐thinking of the traditional therapeutic stance of neutrality in favor of a more engaged, compassionate stance which falls under the broad rubric of “love”. We argue that several different forms of love are required by the nature of the threat to the person’s sense of self posed by psychosis. In agreement with both Western and Eastern philosophical and spiritual traditions, we suggest that recognizing and restoring a person’s “personhood” is fundamentally a loving act. We then distinguish four different forms of non‐romantic love – Karuna, Agape, Philia, and Thelema – all of which are described as having restorative powers in enabling the person to rebuild a sense of self and a self‐determined and meaningful life in a community of his or her peers.

Keywords:

• love
• recovery‐oriented practice
• neutrality
• person
• self
• psychosis

Acknowledgement

Work on this project has been supported by funding from the State of Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.