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SCHIZOPHRENICS’ DRAWINGS INTERPRETATION: MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASPECTS OF THE STUDY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2016. Issue 4 (10). P. 109-124

Schizophrenia, which Deleuze and Guattari described as “the disease of century”, still strongly reinforces its position according to the WHO. Since 2000, the number of ‘schizophrenia’ diagnoses has increased by 40 %. The disease manifestations polymorphism is one of the main differential diagnostic problems. The lack of schizophrenia nosological unity is closely connected with the old question of the disease ‘essence’. However, attempts to build some kind of a correct recognition and interpretation of this mental disorder type still have not given results. Due to the fact that most doctors consider schizophrenia not as a single disease, and as a group of psychoses, with a similar picture of the flow, the diagnosis F20 (schizophrenia) is made on set of the disease most malignant manifestations. Art therapy is widely used in the patients rehabilitation practice; it gives a variety of artistic material for analysis of the schizophrenia signs, ‘language’ and ‘discourse’. The schizophrenic often substitutes one language for another – verbal language for the drawing language. The conceptual basis of this researching is the Timothy Crow (English psychiatrist) hypothesis, that schizophrenia is a language disease. The article identifies correlation between sign (drawing) and symptom (the signified). The surrealism art practices are interpreted in this researching as surrealism declares insanity as an artistic reality. Through using examples of Tomsk Clinical Psychiatric Hospital patient drawings, the insanes and the surrealists creativity comparative analysis is made in the article.

Keywords: schizophrenia, psychoanalysis, Lacan, surrealism, drawing, interpretation