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■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Acknowledgments If writing this book has been gratifying, it is even more gratifying to be able to thank all those people without whom it would not have come to exist. First and foremost, of course, are the hundred plus people who have had first-hand experience of schizophrenia and who have been our teachers. Their courage and resilience in the face of adversity provide us with a constant source of inspiration and instill in us the resolve to ensure that their voices are heard above the din of stigma and indifference. We hope that we have made it possible for their stories, above all else, to be told and understood and for them to find a more welcoming reception when they dare to step outside of the shadow cast by their illness. Second, we thank our students, from whom we continue to learn. They provide the reasons, and the rewards, for passing down the methods described in this book from one generation to the next. They also have collected a good deal of the data used in writing this book. Karl Haglund, Stacey Lambert, Peter Smith, Marge Allende, Joyce Shea, and Connie Nickou, in particular, have made valuable contributions to this book without taking, or getting, credit. We appreciate their energy, their openness, and their empathic sensitivity in conducting fine interviews. What we have been able to offer them they have given back in droves. And then there are our colleagues, past and present. Most continue to be part of our program and thus share the byline, albeit in anonymity. David Stayner has been the stalwart and gifted copilot for most of the excursions described in what follows, always up for the journey. Richard Weingarten, Tom Styron, Jaak Rakfeldt, Michael Hoge, Ezra Griffith, and Will Sledge all have been collaborators on specific studies conducted over the last 12 years. Matt Chinman, Janis Tondora, Luis Añez, and Michael Rowe have also made significant contributions, if from a bit more of a distance . Dave Sells, Golan Shahar, and my father, Bernard Davidson, have read drafts of the manuscript and made valuable suggestions throughout. Martha Staeheli has not only read and reread drafts of the manuscript, ensuring our accurate use of such terms as centrifugal (as opposed, that is, to centripetal) but also has provided valuable suggestions, ongoing feedback, and a much needed counterbalance to the excesses of abstraction of which phenomenological philosophy is often guilty. And we thank our editors, who made useful and encouraging comments while waiting patiently for us to finish. Finally, in a paragraph all his own, we thank John Strauss, my mentor and good friend, and the spiritual force behind our work and our program. John taught me both how to be rigorous and how to discard rigor when it gets in the way of spontaneity and connection. He showed all of us how “Wow!” can at times, and when said with sincere admiration, be a most effective way to encourage interview participants to continue on with their story, and how it is okay, even constructive, to tear up when they are relating particularly sad or tragic parts of their lives. Mostly, John has encouraged this work from the start and consistently throughout, believing firmly in its importance even more than we did. Like the caring person who believed in one of our participants, even when he no longer believed in himself, the steadfast conviction of a world-renowned scientist—who also happens to have a surprising amount of genuine humility—has gotten us through the difficult times of rejections, failed grant submissions, critical reviewers, and departmental skeptics. We owe much to the father of recovery and offer this book as a token of our appreciation. xii ❙ Acknowledgments ...

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