I came across the following in my wanderings and felt it belonged in this thread. What's most interesting is that this quote is in regard to Freud, psychoanalysis and psychosis/schizophrenia...

Quote

Smith’s description of psychoanalytic contributions to understanding psychosis is significantly ill-informed, and lacking in depth. Firstly, he incorrectly asserts that Freud advised against psychoanalysts from approaching the problem of psychosis. It is widely known in psychoanalytic circles, that Freud encouraged such exploration (e.g., Freud in his 1925 paper “An autobiographical study”, noted:“...since the analysts have never relaxed their efforts to come to an understanding of the psychosis...they have managed now in this phase and now in that, to get a glimpse beyond the wall.”) and made cogent observations on the psychotic process.

Freud, in his 1911 paper “Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides” analyzed the illness narrative of Daniel Paul Schreber (1903), Memoirs of my Nervous Illness. Freud emphasized the withdrawal of emotional, libidinal investment in external reality in psychosis which could lead to an internal catastrophe signified in a delusion of world destruction. The latter is a restitutional attempt at self-cure of the extensive de-cathexis: “The delusional formation, which we take to be the pathological product, is in reality an attempt at recovery, a process of reconstruction”.

Freud, in his 1924 paper “Neurosis and Psychosis,” noted: [the ego may be able to avoid collapse] by deforming itself, by submitting to encroachments on its own unity and even perhaps effecting a cleavage or division of itself."

Source: Hearing Voices

The bolded quote was what caught my eye. It's remarkably similar to John Weir Perry's observations as well as the quote by Jung that opens this discussion.

See also:
- The Inner Apocalypse
- Visionary Experience in Myth & Ritual
- Mental Breakdown as Healing