I am really into R.D. Laing and a more obscure psychologist named John Weir Perry. They have fairly different approaches (Laing is more of a post-structuralist,

I am really into R.D. Laing and a more obscure psychologist named John Weir Perry. They have fairly different approaches (Laing is more of a post-structuralist, Perry is a Jungian), but both of them were firm believers that schizophrenia was a process that could be worked through; Perry in particular believed that it was a healing process, not a destructive one, and that successfully going through it (to the other side) involved a reconstruction of the self that left people better-equipped to deal with their lives. I recommend his book, "The Far Side of Madness", for this reason alone, that it contains stories of people who recovered from schizophrenia and felt it had somehow improved them.