ENCOUNTERING PEOPLE LABELED SCHIZOPHRENIC

Diagnostic labels segregate ''normal'' from ''abnormal,'' leading to t he dehumanization of all people. ''Schizophrenia'' is one of the most abusive terms applied to people, highlighting the deficits while obscu ring the strengths that exist in all human beings. The detachment that diagnosis encourages has sometimes been used to justify destructive f orms of treatment. This article examines the value of a poetry worksho p as a means of delabeling schizophrenia and enhancing empathic unders tanding. What makes this annual 7-week experience unique is that it to ok place within the walls of a state institution and involved about an equal number of college students and hospitalized people, who gradual ly moved, through the writing and discussion of poems, from a no-man's land of mutual misconception to a high level of group unity and indiv idual respect.