The demand for narrative coherence within a nonnegotiable normative frame may enact a form of what Judith Butler calls ethical violence. Through an interpretive analysis of archival data from O’Loughlin, Arac-Orhun and Queler’s research with psychosocial clubhouse members, I argue that this ethical violence can be countered through recognition of the unsymbolizable elements of personhood that elude conscious narration. Drawing from Lacan, Bion, and Butler, I argue that by risking our exposure to the opacity of the psychiatric sufferer’s subjectivity, we may avoid objectifying patients and reifying the unsymbolizable psychic violence encoded in severe forms of psychiatric distress.