Before one goes through the gate one may not be aware there is a gate One may think there is a gate to go through and look a long time for it without… - R. D. Laing

We are all murderers and prostitutes — no matter to what culture, society, class, nation, we belong, no matter how normal, moral, or mature we take ourselves to be. Humanity is estranged from its authentic possibilities. This basic vision prevents us from taking any unequivocal view of the sanity of common sense, or of the madness of the so-called madman. … Our alientation goes to the roots. The realisation of this is the essential springboard for any serious reflection on any aspect of present inter-human life.

The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.

His whole life has been torn between his desire to reveal himself and his desire to conceal himself. [...] We have our secrets and our needs to confess. We may remember how, in childhood, adults at first were able to look right through us, and into us, and what an accomplishment it was when we, in fear and trembling, could tell our first lie, and make, for ourselves, the discovery that we are irredeemably alone in certain respects, and know that within the territory of ourselves there can be only our footprints.