Soteria: Through Madness to Deliverance

This is the story of a special time, space, and place where young people diagnosed as "schizophrenic" found a social environment where they were related to, listened to, and understood during their altered states of consciousness. Rarely, and only with consent, did these distressed and distressing persons take "tranquilizers." They lived in a home in a California suburb with nonmedical caregivers whose goal was not to "do to" them but to "be with" them.. The place was called "Soteria" (Greek for deliverance), and there, for not much money, most recovered. Although Soteria's approach was swept away by conventional drug_oriented psychiatry, its humanistic orientation still has broad appeal to those who find the mental_health mainstream limited in both theory and practice. This book recounts a noble experiment to alleviate oppression and suffering without destroying their victims.