ABSTRACT
It is much more difficult to understand the pain of mental illness than that of physical illness. Patients all have a reference for physical pain: Patient have all suffered, to one degree or another, some sort of physical anguish. Patient know that someday we too will face death. People don't know what to expect from psychotic people, and people don't know what will be demanded of us. Patient assumes that their inner lives are different from our own. Patient is not sure, then, where there is common ground. If people are going to understand the suffering of mentally ill, people have to examine how a patient's mind tries to understand its own disordered state. This is illustrated by the markedly different reactions of two schizophrenic patients to their disease. She believed her body was constantly changing, parts of it dying and being reborn. She clearly understood not only the pain of her illness, but also the limitations it imposed on her life.
