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The Social Construction of Schizophrenia

  • Chapter
What Is Schizophrenia?

Abstract

In a recent critique of the schizophrenia hypothesis, Bentall, et al. (1988) quote the following paragraph from John Stuart Mill. I borrow the quotation because it aptly conveys the subtext of my analysis:

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.

I am grateful for helpful suggestions offered by friends and colleagues, among them, Mary Boyle, Ralph M. Carney, William C. Coe, David Cohen, Philip Cowan, Daniel B. Goldstine, Norman S. Greenfield, James C. Mancuso, and Frederick J. Ziegler. An essay based on an earlier version of this paper was published under the title “Toward the obsolscence of the schizophrenia hypothesis” in the Journal of Mind and Behavior, 1990.

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Authors
  1. Theodore R. Sarbin
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pyschology Frances L. Hiatt School of Physchology, Clark University, 01610-1477, Worcester, MA, USA

    William F. Flack Jr. , Morton Wiener (Professor and Director of Clinical Training) & Daniel R. Miller ,  (Professor and Director of Clinical Training) & 

  2. Department of Psychology, Wesleyan University, 06457, Middletown, CT, USA

    Daniel R. Miller

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© 1991 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.

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Sarbin, T.R. (1991). The Social Construction of Schizophrenia. In: Flack, W.F., Wiener, M., Miller, D.R. (eds) What Is Schizophrenia?. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9157-9_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9157-9_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-9159-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-9157-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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