**8. Discursive psychology and intersubjectivity**

In second half of the last century, there were numerous voices from humanities and even from within the natural sciences decrying the reductionist anthropology in scientific psychiatry. The coercive practices of psychiatry in this context were discussed as violations of human rights and dignity. For example, research suggests that involuntary treatment is overused in some parts of the world based on narrow biomedical models of insight [25] and historically totalitarian governments like the Soviet Union have used (as part of their "official" classifications) unscientific labels like "sluggish schizophrenia" with the alleged symptom of "inflexibility of ideas" to incarcerate political dissenters.

This movement aimed at broadening the narrow emphasis of biological psychiatry was enhanced by the developments in the study of language and discourse. Discourse analysis and the related field of discursive psychology [26] regard human verbal interaction as a performative act within a context, i.e., language is used not only to *describe* internal and external reality but also is used to *perform* or achieve certain ends based upon the context within which such an interaction happens. Discursive psychology helps us understand the clinical context in which an assessment of insight happens, for example a delusion or a thought insertion is attributed differently by the clinician and the suffering person. Language therefore is used to describe what the patient is experiencing as well as to interpret and inform his beliefs about the cause of the symptoms in the clinical context. It gives us tools to unravel the intended goals of the person with psychotic illness when he communicates his judgment about the illness.

We are also enriched by the concept of narrative insight [27] which tries to understand the insight of the person suffering from psychosis as a tool by which she tries to make sense of her illness. These concepts of human discourse and narrative add complexity to the concept of insight while emphasizing the personal and interpersonal aspects during the assessment and management of people with psychotic illness.
