Abstract
The field of "Literature and Medicine" has in recent decades received an increased interest, contributing to physicians' humanistic competence in medical practice through texts and methods. In the paper I discuss how psychosis is described in a selection of literary texts, reflecting on possible learning to be derived from this. The paper is based on "The Double - A Petersburg Poem" (1846) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Bell Jar" (1963) by Sylvia Plath. In my opinion, there are many lessons to extract from these texts. There are clear symptoms of psychiatric illness as described from the patients point of view. Compared to academic literature, the fictional presentations of diseases represents more of a complete picture of the patient's experience. Fiction can thus, presumably and hopefully, contribute to physicians' understanding of the experience of the desease and develop empathy for the patient when it comes to psychiatric disorder.