Abstracts of 2005 Award Winners' Papers:

Existential Case Study of Madness: Encounters with Divine Affliction

Scott M. Kiser, MA
Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center

This article presents an existential case study of psychotic episode that the author experienced, focusing particularly on a phenomenological description of the actual process of psychic breakdown and subsequent recovery. Primary importance is placed on depicting this process as an empowering source of meaning formation as well as spiritually transformative experience. The experience of psychosis is thus portrayed as a crisis of meaning in which the individual is challenged to re-establish an ontological ground and integrated sense of self through the recreation and deepening of personal existence. The presentation is a first-person narrative account, followed by an existential analysis of the experience's value in terms of transformation and meaning creation, as well as a discussion of the existentialist sources in philosophy, psychology, and literature, which have contributed significantly to the author's psychospiritual development.