Schizophrenia was psychiatry's arch concept of madness in the twentieth century. However, it was a concept that was both surprisingly problematic and contentious.

This book explores schizophrenia's instability, as the concept changed across the 20th century. It moves beyond sensational accounts of kids on LSD and split personalities, to detail schizophrenia's historically problematic definition, diagnosis, and symptom profile. In doing so, Kieran McNally documents the social uses of the concept, its regional variations, and its fluctuating subtypes. And finally, the book explains how, and why, North American psychiatry sought to improve the concept in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), by introducing group sanctioned operational definitions.

This book reveals a tradition of critical unease towards the concept of schizophrenia and it reveals that criticism of the concept was consistently voiced by many leading schizophrenia researchers - andnot just by 'anti-psychiatrists'. It becomes clear that at no stage in its history was schizophrenia thought to be beyond improvement.

Autorentext
Kieran McNally previously studied and worked at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. He is currently Adjunct Lecturer in Psychology at University College Dublin, Ireland, specializing in the history of psychiatry. He is also the author of the ecological and social history, The Island Imagined by the Sea.

Zusammenfassung

Schizophrenia was 20th century psychiatry's arch concept of madness. Yet for most of that century it was both problematic and contentious. This history explores schizophrenia's historic instability via themes such as symptoms, definition, classification and anti-psychiatry. In doing so, it opens up new ways of understanding 20th century madness.

Inhalt

Introduction

1. Schizodia: The Lexicon

2. The Split Personality

3. Definitions of Schizophrenia

4. Catatonia: Faces in the Fire

5. Chasing the Phantom: Classification

6. Myth and Forgetting: Bleuler's Four As

7. Social Prejudice

8. Contesting Schizophrenia?

9. Manufacturing Consensus in North America

10. 20th Century Schizophrenia

Epilogue: Consider Nijinsky

Appendix A: Goodbye to Hebephrenia