ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the range from ordinary life, through distress to severe depression and schizophrenia. People take to their doctors a range of human conditions – distress, problems derived from living as well as illness, in other words 'disgust with life in general'. People can sense their powerful and distressing feelings of abandonment and emotional coldness flooding into their body leading to a cold, or worse. The extremities of the spectrum are relatively easy to identify, but it is much less clear where the precise lines should be drawn between mental health, the ordinary difficulty of living, neurotic suffering, depression and schizophrenia. Specialised knowledge gained through the intensive psychotherapeutic treatment of schizophrenia and its related conditions has built upon the fundamental continuity of human experience. The builder's description of himself and his life illustrates the personal struggles, the wrestling with his relationships and with himself that makes up an important part of life and its meaningfulness.
