A Refracted Reality of Everyday Life: The Constructed Culture of a Therapeutic Community

Focusing on the charismatic authority of its Founder/ holistic therapeutic community for schizophrenics, this paper examines the process of reality construction in an alternative therapeutic milieu. Data was provided from a field work study involving intensive participant observation over a two year period and open-ended interviews. Within a phenomenological perspective, therapeutic work is viewed as a cognitive activity that not only redefines and transforms the meanings of everyday life but also one that in the process of redefining produces a peculiar cognitive style-a specific tension of consciousness -through a specific epoch& By virtue of this sustained bracket and a self-consciously created culture the therapeutic community is seen as constructing its own version of reality and a peculiar social world.