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The book of Murray Jackson and Paul William with the subtitle “A Search for Meaning in Psychosis” is a manifestation of the authors' desire to understand the incomprehensible, dramatically surprising reactions of the psychotic patient, and invest them with meaning.
The title of the book alludes to the patient's condition of inner chaotic, nightmarish anxiety and tension, called “unthinkable anxiety” by Winnicott and “nameless dread” by Bion. The title also seems to refer to the strong provocations and confusing uncertainties which, in many connections, characterise the work situation of the staff.
Ward VI at the Maudsley Hospital consists of two units, one of them being in conformity with a medical-biological approach to psychiatry. Murray Jacksom's unit is structured according to a psychoanalytic treatment model, thus representing a unique phenomenon in English psychiatry.
The Maudsley Hospital is a very large psychiatric hospital with many units in which the medical-pharmacological treatment model was predominant. Behaviouristic therapy and theory were also strongly represented by Professor Eysenck who held a professorship at the hospital and whose thinking powerfully influenced English psychology. For example, it proved to be quite impossible for Murray Jackson to find psychologists inside or outside the hospital who confessed an interest in psychodynamic psychology. The social anthropologist Paul Williams, on the other hand, had been using the unit as a study object for his doctoral thesis, and in this connection, had arranged video tape recordings of Murray Jackson's interviews. Later, Paul Williams trained to qualify as a psychoanalyst and worked closely with Murray Jackson to make the material accessible for printing in book form.
The most important chapters in the book contain verbatim evaluation reports of Murray Jackson's initial interviews with recently hospitalised patients. On the basis of these interviews, the staff discussed the patients' conditions: