People speak of schizophrenics as though they were dead without being dead, gone in the eyes of those around them. Schizophrenics are victims of the Russian word гибель (gibel), which is synonymous with “doom” and “catastrophe”—not necessarily death nor suicide, but a ruinous cessation of existence; we deteriorate in a way that is painful for others. Psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas defines “schizophrenic presence” as the psychodynamic experience of “being with [a schizophrenic] who has seemingly crossed over from the human world to the non-human environment,” because other human catastrophes
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