Medieval mysticism to schizoaffective disorder:the repositioning of subjectivity in the discourse of psychiatry

Utilising the scholarship of Foucault and Bakhtin, this chapter explores European understandings to unusual experiences pre and post-Enlightenment. Drawing on the first-hand narrative of Margery Kempe (@1373-1438), the chapter examines how unusual behaviours are defined through dominant paradigms of understanding in each period- firstly, using cultural-religious understandings, and secondly framed as early examples of psychosis following the advent of psychiatry. With the experiencing subject embedded in time, space and a network of human relations that are all pivotal to the validation of human experience, the chapter argues that the search for meaning should take precedence over concerns regarding categorisation