Author: asmith39

Written by Amanda Smith

On the evening of April 23rd, the last lecture of the Mysterium Hunanum Studies on Madness commenced. Presented by Craig Vasey was the series last topic: An Existentialist Approach to Madness.

Vasey started off  his presentation with the word “madness” asking the audience what does the word mean exactly, if we could put one single definitive definition to it. He explains that it’s just a word, it can cover an array of things from physical imbalances or disturbance in the mind. He further explained that it can’t be but into a single definition, he says describing the madness is like describing what love means. It’s hard to determine a significant single meaning for it. He jokes adding, “Madness is a linguist black hole.”

Vasey then goes into an overview of his main point about the research he found on Freud theories looking at literary works made by Freud’s colleague, Michael Thompson. Thompson wrote “The Truth about Freud’s Technique”where we explore the idea that there is no such thing as mental illness because it is not a proper medical condition, or as Vasey says, “mental illness is a metaphor, a mapping of medical talk and values (concerning physical suffering and its cause) onto behavior, feelings, thought, consciousness-experience” In culture today, he explains, that mental illness is just a term we have accepted. That we as a society want to make it seem that there is a cure to mental illness, that it something we need to find a solution to. But in reality, we are only helping someone who is suffering, suffer less. Whether it be throughs medically prescribed drugs or therapy. Overall, showing us that the medical field is in charge of mentally ill individuals.

To introduce the findings of Freud’s time, Vasey gave a brief background but how 1780’s the idea of moral treatment came along, a “remarkable step forward in treating such people as human beings who need help from society,”  Vasey exclaims sarcastically, meaning that instead of treating mentally ill people as criminals, entertainment, and animals, we treated them like humans that need help. When psychoanalyst started to treat these individuals they thought that the body or mind was intervened by the gods of evil spirits, had a failure to control appetites and desires, or possessed by the devil. These ‘findings’ were then resulting in private institutionalization because they were too much too handle or states were sponsoring warehousing to try techniques to control these mental ill patients. But then came Freud.

As Thompson had put it, “Freud believed people developed hysteria and neurosis because they have been traumatized by unrequited love in their childhoods. He was the first to recognize that our parents, in fact all our relationships, have on us and our capacity to love is also the source of the most profound suffering.” From then on, Freud would consider this notion with tests and therapy sessions that would, as Vasey says, reach the repressed memories or thoughts that are causing the suffering by paying attention to the patients concerns in order to help them. Vasey explained that in repression, one is not aware of the memories, and that the mind is actively working to keep those memories repressed.

Though this concept was hard to grasp for the audience, we all were astounded by the evidence found in Thompson work. Thompson wrote, that there was a woman who was temporarily blind, paralyzed, and would not drinking water and was very unhealthy due to the fact. After Freud had put her under hypnosis she grumbled about her english lady companion, saw the lady’s dog drinking out of her glass, but didn’t want to be impolite so she didn’t say anything, she asked for a drink of water, and then woke up with the glass to her lips and never was disturbed again by this experience.

From this, Vasey would explain the difficulty of a psychoanalysis. Which can be explain with the “three humiliations of human narcissism at the hands of science.” Those three concepts being: cosmological, biological, and psychological. cosmological is the past time revelation that we used to think the earth was the center of the universe and god put us there. But was it’s actually true is that the sun is the center, thanks to Copernicus. Biological humiliation was when the human race thought they were a supernatural being, but Darwin provided a different opinion, evolution. Finally, what this lecture is focused on is the psychological humiliation. We think that we are in control of our mind, but according to Freud and Vasey “you’re not the master of your own house and the ego cannot control its drives.” The mind represses things, and they may come back to torment you, but overall we are not in control.

Vasey then extend is notion, that we don’t control our thoughts, and ties in the beliefs/themes of existentialism. One of these themes was anxiety. We have so many anxieties that we repress, because we are a race that is aware of ourselves, cares we exists, and knows that we will die. Amongst these fairly important anxieties we also  carry around the question of life: what is the meaning of human existence? What kind of being is human being? We have heightened our awareness of our existence, that we developed the distractions of everyday life. Whether it be through tasks or through keeping busy with multiple activities, we absorbed ourselves in things, to keep our minds away from the anxieties, which is an understandable reaction, it’s not a mental illness, it is a part of life. Vasey calls this repression of anxieties, ontological insecurity. Vasey also briefly pointed out that we have become a generation of understanding of everyone’s weirdness, because we all have troubles.

The final conclusion of Vasey’s lecture was that Freud findings makes sense. We all really do repress our memories and anxieties, there is a subconscious we cannot access directly, and that being like this is not medically related at all, or as one student suggested, “we are all mad here.”

Workplace and Disability Game: A Riff Off of Dungeons and Dragons Game

By Amanda Smith & Ben Fancher

Our project is based off of the tabletop-paper-and-dice game “Dungeons and Dragons.” The concept of the game is to roll a number to successfully perform an action that will benefit them to “survive” throughout the campaign (story plot). Characters will have modifiers that will make the rolled number go up or down depending on their skills, physical appearance, mental and social capabilities. To depicted this game into a disability lens, our four characters that will be played will vary in certain abilities, that will be observed through their skills. Our first character is Victor Frankenstein, based off of Mary Shelley’s main character of her novel, Frankenstein. He will depict an straight, white, abled-bodied, wealthy, and education male. Victor is not disabled, and will have a great advantage over all the other characters throughout the game’s campaign. Our next character is Tom Robinson, he is a supporting character in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. Tom represents an uneducated, black-male with a shriveled left arm (from his cotton gin accident). Tom will be disadvantaged against Victor because of his race, education, and disability. Our third character is Arthur “Boo” Radley, also a supporting character in Harper Lee’s novel. Arthur is a white male that is mentally disabled with an assumed diagnosis of autism and agoraphobia. With these, Arthur will be extremely disadvantaged from Victor and Tom with certain skills. The fourth character, is The Mermaid from the Oscar Wilde’s short story, The Fisherman and His Soul. The Mermaid is a foreign female character that does not have legs and cannot walk. The Mermaid in this campaign is heavily disabled character compared to the others character because of her impairments. All our characters will be doing a campaign that will resemble every character going to their first day of work to the same office to complete the same task, their ultimate goal is to get through the day and get money. By creating these disabled characters and this campaign, our goal is for players to realize some characters will be more advantaged than others and will succeed more easily in skills to succeed in the workplace. It is possible for all characters to finish a day at work,  but for some characters the task will come easier. Throughout this semester in Disability in Literature we have learned that the abled-bodied straight, white, educated male from a wealthy family will have far easier time succeeding in the workplace than other characters who might be just as if not capable to do the job. The only thing that is holding them back is their impairments or disabilities.

Campaign Map: Newspaper Office

-Editor in Chief office

-Stairs to front

-Ramp on side

-Individual desks

-Cooperative group (desk of three)

-Conference room

-Bathroom

-Waiting area (three chairs)

Character Sheets

Campaign Outline

1. All characters arrive to work at DisLit Times, the self-proclaimed newspaper for teens, tweens, and everything in betweens.  
   1. Characters all arrive at 8 a.m. for their first day. DisLit Times recently had a massive set of layoffs and they need new employees
      1. Introduce the players, have them introduce themselves to each other too
   2. The new Editor-in-Chief: Tom Robinson, the kindest and best man in all of Maycomb county. Recently moved to Fredericksburg, VA, with his family for this new job opportunity. Is optimistic.
   3. The new Health Editor: Victor Frankenstein. Victor left his life in Europe after a number of failed scientific experiments which he refuses to talk about. Is prepared to share his wealth of knowledge of the human body and its needs with the readers of DisLit Times
   4. The new Advice Columnist: Arthur Radley. Arthur’s life has been spent observing people and their troubles, so he is extremely prepared for his new job as the anonymous writer of the “Dear Boo…” advice column. He works from home, but, despite his protests, has to come in today for orientation and to sign some papers.
   5. The new Horoscope Writer: The Mermaid (the one from The Fisherman and His Soul). A life spent musing on life and love has turned the mermaid into the perfect horoscope writer. She is unable to work out of the water, however, so the Fisherman built her a mobile tank to enable her to go to the office and work. The Fisherman moves her around in her tank until they are able to devise a way to make the tank self-propelling in a way that doesn’t combine water and electricity in a harmful way.
2. Characters roll a perception check as they stand at the front of the building
   1. Looking to beat a 5
   2. If characters succeed in the roll, they notice that the only way up to the front door of the building housing the DisLit Times’ small office is a staircase
      1. This is fine for everyone except the mermaid, who must try and see if there is any other way into the building
      2. Mermaid must roll investigation, looking to beat a 10
      3. If successful, the player sees that there is a ramp on the left side of the building, leading up to another entrance.
      4. If unsuccessful, other players can roll for the same check, assuming that they are polite and not, you know, unempathetic monsters.
      5. Mermaid (propelled by the Fisherman) goes to the side entrance and goes up the ramp and goes inside, while the other players go up the stairs to the front entrance
   3. Describe the Office
      1. Once inside the front entrance, Tom, Victor, and Arthur see the receptionist, Becky.
         1. Ask if they wait for the Mermaid
            1. If they don’t, start the interaction with Becky
            2. If yes, then have the Mermaid head to the front with the others
3. Interaction with Becky begins
   1. Ask if anyone wants to approach the receptionist, who is ignoring the group of them
   2. Whoever wants to approach starts a dialogue with Becky. Becky reacts like a deer in the headlights if anyone except
   3. During the dialogue, have the characters all roll Constitution saving throws to avoid Becky’s offensive comments.
      1. Victor has to beat a 5. If he doesn’t beat it, he gets asked if he’s sick, since Victor is kind of wiry and pale (because, you know, anxiety) but if he beats it he gets asked if he is the new Editor-in-chief. Becky is very respectful and formal with him, but seems almost nervous about having to talk to the others.
      2. Tom rolls, and has to beat an 18 to avoid hearing Becky say “Oh I heard we were hiring a cripple, are you going to be working in the warehouse? The foreman can give you a tour of the warehouse, you don’t really have to come up here that much.” If Tom rolls high enough, Becky simply asks him to introduce himself to her.
      3. The Mermaid rolls and has to beat a 19. If she doesn’t Becky looks confused and asks the fisherman if this is some sort of new art exhibit that he is delivering? If the roll is successful, she simply introduces herself too and expresses concern that the office isn’t really designed to have a tank wheeled around in it.
      4. Arthur has to beat a 17. If unsuccessful, Becky speaks to him, which is bad enough, but also she inquires about his health, saying that he looks so pale. Probably would call him a pencil or something. If he beats a 17, she remembers seeing in one of the papers that the new advice columnist had severe agoraphobia and would most likely not want to do a lot of talking, and says hello.
4. After this, the characters roll initiative. This decides what order they are shown around the office. The characters’ respective trips through the office are outlined below
   1. Before all this, Becky calls the various people who are showing the characters around the office to the reception desk
   2. Tom
      1. Shown around the office by Becky. She takes him into the bullpen and to the conference room and finally to his office. Once in the office, Becky begins asking probing questions about his injury: “Does it hurt”, “how did it happen” “Can I see it?” (Unless he rolls another +19 constitution saving throw)
   3. Arthur
      1. Shown around by the Style Editor, Gerald. Gerald is pretentious, rude, and judgemental. Unless Arthur beats a 19 saving throw, Gerald will march him through the office and ask Arthur what’s the matter with him, why is he so quiet, he should speak up if he’s a real man, all that nonsense.
   4. Victor
      1. Shown around by Susan, a columnist for the health section. Victor needs to roll a Charisma check and beat Susan’s modifier of 9. If he does, then Susan is absolutely charmed by him and is just so friendly and welcoming. If he doesn’t, then she is just professional.
   5. Mermaid
      1. She is shown around by the Style Editor, Thomas, who sort of doesn’t know what to do with her, since the tank can’t really be pushed around the office completely safely. (character will do various Dexterity checks to see whether or not the tank is able to get through the office without bumping into anything). Thomas is quiet and polite and helps the Mermaid as much as he can. If the Mermaid succeeds on a Charisma persuasion check of 17, Thomas tells her about how, when he was younger, he had braces on his legs to straighten them out, so he knows how hard it is to get around.
   6. After the four characters are shown around, they are given their paperwork to sign. While the characters sign paperwork at their desks (Tom in his office, Victor at an Editor’s desk, The Mermaid and Arthur in the conference room) the have to do Charisma Intimidation checks to see if Susan and Gerald are going to come up and bother them or not. Victor has to beat a 7, everyone else tries to beat a 15.
5. Once all the paperwork is done, everyone can give it to Becky to send to HR. All of our characters are now free to get to work.

By Amanda Smith

On April 5, 2019, Tessa Fontaine created a wild and crowded audience in the William Street Mansion. Tessa Fontaine is an internationally published author who wrote a nonfiction book about her life on the road with America’s last travelling circus and the parallels of fear and horror that her mother faced when becoming paralyzed from massive strokes. On this evening Tessa would be making a quick stop on her national book tour, a year after being apart of the circus.

Her book is titled, “The Electric Woman”. Mrs Fontaine had come to UMW to read a few of her favorite sections of her book. Her first reading was the book’s prologue. When reading this section, Tessa drew in her audience with her with the tone of her voice. At first, her words were playful and humorous while telling the audience that she had googled sideshow acts and lied to her boss about what she could do acts such as fire eating, sword swallowing, and snake charming.

She went on to explain later in her next reading section that she would learn how to one of the things she told her boss she knew how to do, fire eating. When telling this compelling story she said that during the days leading up to her fire eating class she was hoping that fire-eating was just an illusion, that you didn’t really have to put fire into your mouth. After taking the audience through a vivid experience of learning how to smother a fire burning on human legs and arms to the burning, charcoal taste of fire burning her tongue as she put out the flame in her mouth. Tessa suddenly deepened and darken her tone as she placed emphasis on the line “the trick is that there is no trick…you eat fire by eating fire.” I do believe that by saying this she had told the audience the central theme of her book. That she really meant to say, there are no shortcuts or easy streets in life, you just need to go through life and do it. Circulating around this idea, Tessa had introduced the character of her mother and how she went through a series of massive strokes which left her paralyzed, speechless and left her with symptoms of short term memory loss. Her mom would become dependent solely on her and husband, Davey.

Tessa explained that Davey and her mom would set out for a trip to Italy that they have been waiting a long time to do. Tessa had thought the worst, that her mom was taking an extreme risk with her health and that she would facing death right in the face. Which to Tessa had influenced her decision to join the circus. Tessa answered an audience member’s compelling question, “Why the circus? Why not something else?” to where Tessa would explain that she joined the circus because it would be dangerous. Then she would be facing her fears, just like her mom was or as Tessa put it briefly, “I was building intimacy with something that I feared” Another audience member had asked, “how did you deal with your mom?” Tessa replied hesitantly, “It was devastating. Having a wonderful humans body fail and not be able to do what its suppose to takes its toll, especially since you’ve seen the vibrant person they used to be.” Tessa went onto a more light-hearted section of how her co-workers taught her how to swallow a sword and that, just like eating fire, “you just had to untrain your bodies natural instincts to chose and hurl, and just shove a knife down your throat.” as she put it.

I believe her reading highlighted the most important idea of her novel. That you need to go through life with every intention of knowing how dangerous it is, and also learn that you’ll need to endure with some amount of pain along the way. There is no trick to life. But the best way to live through it is to just do it.

Written by Amanda Smith 

On the afternoon of March 19th, I had attended Theresa Steward’s lecture from the Mysterium Humanum series on madness. Her topic of discussion was on “Musical Interpretations of Love and Madness in the Persian Epic Leili o Majnun” (translated as Layla and Majnun). The main objective of Steward’s lecture was to look at the story of Layla and Majnun and compare its meaning of madness with its modern musical interpretations. 

To start off the lecture, Steward went over the story’s history and plot. Layla and Majnun story is known as the “Romeo and Juliet of the East”. It traditional epic story was written by Nizami, a poet from the early 12th-century era. The story is placed in 7th century Bedouin, Arabia were two lovers meet. The story begins with the meetings of a beautiful women Layla and a man named Qays. They meet in school at the age of ten and since that moment they have been in love with each other- so much that they believed that touching one another is not needed to know how much they love each other. One day, Layla’s parents prevented Layla and Qay from seeing each other and even arranged a marriage for Layla. From the torture and toil of not being able to be with Layla, Qay had become Majnun (which translates to madness, crazy, mad). Now, Majnun escapes to the desert and becomes a hermit who gives up all of his earthly possessions- like his clothes- and vows to not eat or hunt animals, he states that he has “eaten the eater.” At the end of the story Layla becomes ill and dies, then Majnun visits her grave and dies laying on it (it is assumed that died from heartbreak). As a result of death, Layla and Majnun are united in heaven and live happily ever after. From this story, Steward gathered that this is more than a simple tragic love story. 

Steward stated that the story represents Sufism. Sufism is the religious belief that finding divine love will transcend an individual and awakening the true spirit into divine madness. To transcend, one must take their soul on a journey towards God, annihilate one’s ego, and transcend earthly desires. Looking at the story of Layla and Majnun, Majnun can be seen as a character who inherits divine madness. With his isolation in the desert, his support for animals, his “letting go” of ego, and his unconsummated love with Layla, he has fulfilled each stage of transcendence. Because of this, God has brought them together in heaven with their immortal love. Steward stated that Sufism shows that divine madness is known today as mental illness. With this evidence, Steward surprised her audience with a completely different interpretation of the divine love story shown in music.

Steward first introduced Hajibeyli’s Leyli and Majnun Opera. First performed in 1908, the performance tells the story through the orchestra, choruses, and individual vocals. The vocals, however, are presented using mugham (a traditional vocal improvisation). Reflecting on this Opera the orchestra shows madness with repetition of the chorus “Night of Separation” in different tones. These tones change along with the visual tethering of clothes and progressive weakness in the character portraying Majnun. What this Opera doesn’t show is the divine love and madness within Majnun in the end. Instead, they show the tragedy of mad love with the abrupt ending of him dying on her tombstone. This opera is still performed today but still has not changed its meaning. Therefore, showing negative affliction. So does it ever change? 

We ventured on into the modern interpretations of this story and found one piece from 1992 named “Song of Majnun” by Bright Sheng. Instead of a tragic love story, the meaning is twisted into love and suffering after being separated from one’s homeland. Sheng was, in his youth, exiled to Tibet, to where he escaped to the United States to become the composer he is today. His composition introduces instrument and voices that create the sounds of a “mad men” by using Greek chorus (two people gossiping to narrate story), dissonance (ugly sounds that don’t go together), and shifts in meter, and repetition of words, Sheng produced what can be interpreted as a sense of madness and the experience of an unstable mind. “Though this not exactly divine madness, it is as close as we have gotten. 

In conclusion, she stated that western civilization stigmatizes divine madness as a negative affliction and descent towards madness, like a descent towards hell. Whereas divine madness is actually a positive journey and an ascension upwards towards the divine. She exclaims that the story is not a tragedy but a happy love story, and is waiting for someone to tackle the story from this angle, musically!

In Joy Harjo’s poem, “The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window”, the author portrays an unnamed female character contemplating to commit suicide by falling off the thirteenth floor of a tenement building in East Chicago. Looking at the poem through a disability lens, a crucial key passage shows the character’s feelings in the environment around them at present, morph together to create a person that is struggling with decisions of suicide and severe depression. The key passage is as follows:

And the woman hanging from the 13th floor window

          hears other voices. Some of them scream out from below

          for her to jump, they would push her over. Others cry softly

        from the sidewalks, pull their children up like flowers and gather

         them into their arms. They would help her, like themselves.

        But she is the woman hanging from the 13th floor window,

          and she knows she is hanging by her own fingers, her

          own skin, her own thread of indecision. (l.41-48)

The author states that the woman can hear voices from below. Some call “for her to jump” and some say they will “push her over” to her death, while others “cry softly” and pled that they “would help her” (l.43,45).  These people at the bottom can be interpreted as the able-bodied people of society and their reactions to this woman’s disability. On one hand, people are condoning her suicide because having a disability a hardship or a difficult for which helping her end her life might be a way of escaping that burden. As the author addresses, “She thinks she will be set free” (l. 7). On the other hand, there are people who see her suffering and are compassionate. They are supportive and want to help her. When they say “they would help her like themselves” (l. 45), it could the interpreted as those in the community who suffer from disability if not from depression like the character. Whether the people want her to jump or not, it is still not their decision in the end.

  Towards the end of this passage, it is stated “but she is the woman hanging from the 13th-floor window” indicating the decision to end her life or live with her depression is ultimately up to her, not society, she is the only one hanging from the window. With the lines, “she knows she is hanging by her own fingers, her/ own skin, her own thread of indecision” (l. 47-48) The character understands that it is not the effects of the society below that are hanging her in the balance of her indecision, it is her own fingers, her own choice to allow her to fall or not. It goes to show that the disabled individual or any disabled person has the capability to make the decision for themselves, not anyone else.   

Overall, this passage put to questions some aspects that can be applied to disability studies, these being the concept of society’s influence on the disabled individual and the capability of a disabled individual to make a decision for themselves.

Works Cited

Harjo, Joy. The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window, 19 Feb. 2019, www.amerinda.org/newsletter/13-3/harjo.html.

Word Count: 524

Written by Amanda Smith

            During the afternoon of February 19, I attended a lecture from the Mysterium Humanum series on madness, titled “The Flag of Imagination: The Surrealists and Artists on the Schizophrenia Spectrum”. Presented by Dr. Julia A. DeLancey, was this fascinating talk about Hans Prinzhorn’s  1922 study of Schizophrenic spectrum patient’s art work and the surrealism era of the 1920-1930s. 

            Breaking down the title of her lecture, Dr. DeLancey wanted to first introduce \what disability studies is. Her definition was simply stated as socially constructed and performative; how society constructs disability. She allows explains the three main categories a disability can be seen as: medical, social, and interdependence. Medical is the physical impairment one has (paralyzed), whereas social is the how environment effects the individual (stairs are a problem), and interdependence refers to need for assistance. The disability she focuses on is Schizophrenia spectrum. Which is when an individual has poor executive function, thought disorders, psycho-social factors, and hallucinations. 

            Working towards the other section of her title she introduces the start of surrealism. Dr DeLancey remarks the World War 1 plays a major role in how surrealism starts. During World War 1, soldiers that fought in the trenches were coming back with significant psychological trauma. During this time, Sigmund Freud was developing his form of therapy, called psychoanalysis. This form is believed to delve into the subconscious and unconscious mind, the sources of all problems or traumatic experiences, which was a major focus to surrealist.

            The founder of surrealism, Andre Breton, was a war veteran who saw shell shock first hand, it was in1924 when Brenton writes his manifesto ( his statement of beliefs) of surrealism, a movement that will reconcile two different realities (the real world and dream world, the world in between those being surrealism) which can be accessed through things like hallucinations and visions. Surrealist took a page out of Freud’s book by trying to access surrealism in the mind by doing “waking dreams” sessions and automatism drawing and writing (where a person draws or writes without thinking about what came to them). It was only then when theorist and writers began to explain that there are only three types of people that are truly creative: Children, people from primitive cultures, and people with mental illnesses. As Brenton had put it, “I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own.”

            After explaining these two main concepts (Disability and Surrealism), Dr DeLancey excites us with the bulk of her research on Hans Prinzhorn’s 1922 case studies. Prinzhorn, in his time, had training as an art historian and experience in psychology. Later in his life, he began working in a psychiatric clinic in Germany. The patients there created many pieces of artwork that doctors examined so they could diagnose the patients. Prinzhorn inferred with the notion pieces were art-worthy studies. Prinzhorn then began to conduct his research on ten different patients in this clinic where he would find common traits such as expressive, playful, patterned order, symbolic system, obsessive copying, and ornamental elaboration. 

            One patient, Agnes Richter, had the whole room jaw dropped. Agnes was a seamstress until her family committed her to the clinic. She then began her project on her straight jacket embroidering her file number, statements, feeling, and thoughts. Dr Delancey told us that her doing this was a way for “her words to touch her”.  The audience identified that her artwork was a form obsessive copying of her words. 

            Another patient Prinzhorn studied was Adolf Wolfli, who was hospitalized most of his adult life due to mental and physical abuse. Wolfli had to different types of artwork he created, his bread art and his book art. In order to do his book art, Wolfli would create small individual pieces of his work such as collages of labels, pictures, and recipes to sell. After he sold enough, he would put the money toward materials for his book art. One piece we examined was his bread work, titled “Saint Mary Castle Giant Grape”. This work was identified as elaborate ornamentation, pattern order (orange bubbles color-pattern), and playful (The hidden faces). 

            During the 1920s, people believed that those with mental illnesses had the true creativity to create surrealism art. Based on Hans Prinzhorn’s case studies, it can be observed that his patients can create art work based on their pure imagination. It was unclear if in fact the patient’s art was based on the this “in-between” surreal world they could be in, but looking at the characteristics of schizophrenia such as hallucinations, it can be interpreted that these patients have the ability to access pure imagination and portray it in an art form.