ABSTRACT
Plunging into the Hearing Voices Network and the whole psychiatric survivor movement has turned out to be a lot more intense than ordinary research. Hearing people's wrenching stories and witnessing their continued suffering dissolves much of the distance that would be present in the typical social science interview. Mary Barstow talks about train tracks in her art thesis, a harrowing story that she stayed with Agnes Richter. Mary was terrorized by the all-encompassing presence of The Thing, which seemed to be outside and inside her simultaneously. She tried to cut it out of her body, injuring herself so seriously that she required an emergency operation. Mary's depiction of the screeching brakes and shrill horn were vivid and terrifying. Agnes remembers a train journey from London to Cambridge. When the train stops near Stevenage due to a fatality, Agnes recalls the persons she knows who tried for suicide.
