Mental Illness, Pathologies 

From the Introduction:
"This book is concerned with the experience of mental illness. It is presented in the conviction that there is no better starting point for those seeking to understand this strange and baffling phenomenon than accounts of this experience. Here, perhaps to a greater extent than with any other data, we can come into intimate contact with the reality of mental illness itself, and not only find out "what it was like," but also seek the kernel of purposefulness and intentionality around which it is organized. The phenomenon of mental illness may be described as a radical alteration in the character of the subjective experience of the person, a different quality and mode of consciousness. In the personal accounts presented in this volume there are rich descriptions both of these altered states and of the processes through which they developed and disappeared. - from Amzon