Mandalas . The self-healing strength

How can one interpret this seeming contradiction—people defined as broken beings (schizo: schism; phrenis: thought) creating a large amount of circular images that are universal symbols of unity, of integration, and of the totality of being?
– Nise da Silveira

At first, I did not believe that those were mandalas. “Schizophrenics cannot do that,” I thought to myself, driven by the prejudices I still carried from traditional psychiatry. We don’t get rid of that easily. I used to relate mandalas to Oriental philosophy, as an instrument of contemplation, perfect forms whose purpose was to stimulate concentration, to round off the mind. However, they were featured in drawings by schizophrenic patients, who, by definition, were shattered people.
– Nise da Silveira

It’s worthy of notice the fact that the images of totality spontaneously created by the unconscious, the symbols of the self in the shape of mandalas, also follow a mathematical structure. As a rule, they are quaternities or their multiples. These structures not only express order, they create it.”
– C. G. Jung