Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl: Reality Lost and Regained

by Marguerite Sechehaye, Grace Rubin-Rabson (Translator)

Overview

Marguerite Sechehaye, a Swiss psychotherapist, followed the work of Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget closely, believing there was a link between psychosis and trauma experienced as a child. One of her most notable cases was undertaken with a psychotic patient referred to as "Renée", a pseudonym used for Louisa Düss, whom she and her husband Albert Sechehaye eventually adopted.
Over the course of their work together, Dr. Sechehaye took the unique approach of chronicling "Renee's" journal entries and personal reflections in tandem with her own clinical commentary. The approach significantly influenced mental illness research by introducing an antipsychiatry framework that positioned the patient's experiences as a valid means of establishing their case histories.
As a result of this work, Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl: Reality Lost and Regained was first published in 1951, highlighting the most memorable aspects of the disease. The book remarkably reveals to the "normal" mind the emotional shadings, perceptions, confusions, and tortures of a mind at the brink of dissolution. It is at once a harrowing experience and a magnificently moving testimonial to the capacity of a human being to survive and triumph.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789124989
Publisher:	Muriwai Books
Publication date:	12/01/2018
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	89
File size:	597 KB

About the Author

MARGUERITE ALBERT SECHEHAYE (1887-1964) was a Swiss psychotherapist and pioneer in the psychoanalytic treatment of people with schizophrenia. She developed the symbolic realization method for treating psychotic patients, with an approach rooted in psychoanalytic and existential theory.
Born Marguerite Burdet on September 27, 1887 in Switzerland, she was raised in a Protestant family. She studied at the University of Geneva, where she attended lectures by Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics. Between 1906 and 1911, her notes from these lectures assisted Charles Bally and her husband, Albert Sechehaye, to develop Course in General Linguistics, published in 1916, three years after Saussure's death. The book is generally regarded as the starting point of structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics that flourished in Europe and the United States in the first half of the 20th century.
After graduating, Sechehaye studied at the Rousseau Institute, where she worked as the assistant of Édouard Claparède, and later went on to establish her own practice based on the encouragement of Raymond de Saussure.
Sechehaye's other published works are Symbolic Realization; A New Method of Psychotherapy Applied to a Case of Schizophrenia (1951) and A New Psychotherapy in Schizophrenia; Relief of Frustrations by Symbolic Realization (1956).
She died in Geneva on June 1, 1964, aged 76.
DR. GRACE RUBIN-RABSON (1903-1981) was an American psychologist, pianist, translator and author. She conducted a consulting practice, lectured in psychology at Indiana University, and specialized in experimental work in relation to piano memorizing. She was the author of The Influence of Analytical Pre-Study in Memorizing Piano Music (1937), which was also her thesis submitted for her degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Columbia University.

Born Marguerite Burdet on September 27, 1887 in Switzerland, she was raised in a Protestant family. She studied at the University of Geneva, where she attended lectures by Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics. Between 1906 and 1911, her notes from these lectures assisted Charles Bally and her husband, Albert Sechehaye, to develop Course in General Linguistics, published in 1916, three years after Saussure’s death. The book is generally regarded as the starting point of structural linguistics, an approach to linguistics that flourished in Europe and the United States in the first half of the 20th century.
After graduating, Sechehaye studied at the Rousseau Institute, where she worked as the assistant of Édouard Claparède, and later went on to establish her own practice based on the encouragement of Raymond de Saussure.
Sechehaye’s other published works are Symbolic Realization; A New Method of Psychotherapy Applied to a Case of Schizophrenia (1951) and A New Psychotherapy in Schizophrenia; Relief of Frustrations by Symbolic Realization (1956).
She died in Geneva on June 1, 1964, aged 76.
DR. GRACE RUBIN-RABSON (1903-1981) was an American psychologist, pianist, translator and author. She conducted a consulting practice, lectured in psychology at Indiana University, and specialized in experimental work in relation to piano memorizing. She was the author of The Influence of Analytical Pre-Study in Memorizing Piano Music (1937), which was also her thesis submitted for her degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Columbia University.