title: ENCOUNTERS WITH PSYCHOSIS.
abstract: This essay offers a personal account of one physician's attempt to engage with psychotic patients in an inner-city hospital. It considers some of the obstacles to psychoanalytic work with psychotic patients, including anxiety in the psychotherapist, anxiety in the patient, institutional resistances, and paradigmatic errors. A discussion of paradigmatic errors in Western mental health care is expanded upon. Rorty's () critique of objectivity and Kuhn's () work on scientific paradigm shifts are discussed in an attempt to demonstrate how we might better understand psychosis as an illness and connect with patients across the entire diagnostic spectrum.
authors.affiliation: Psychiatrist and psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco. He previously worked as an attending psychiatrist at San Francisco General Hospital and as an Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
authors.forename: Joseph R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Dwaihy
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Psychosis; history of science; inpatients; objectivity; paradigm shift; philosophy; pragmatism; truth