The Trouble with Schizophrenia

Abstract

The general disarray in recent efforts to formulate a convergent and economical model of schizophrenia suited to the work of professional therapy and the findings of the principal medical, sociological, and allied disciplines ought not to be regarded as evidence of an incipient mass schizophrenia on the part of the members of the affected specialties. It is really nothing more than a sign of being entirely in touch with the prevailing high-level disputes in the philosophy of science (particularly in the philosophy of the human sciences) and with even larger disputes regarding the cognitive intransparency of nature and the horizonal bias of the history of cognitive inquiry. The full significance of this connection with other fields is very largely ignored. In fact, it is entirely predictable that well-informed specialists in schizophrenia, (chiefly psychiatrists and behavioral scientists), who tend to form distinctly opposed theoretical camps among themselves, would probably join forces to greet the supposed diagnostic relevance of such conceptual issues with a good deal more than genial doubt.¹ They would be mistaken in doing so, however. The quarrels in the field are not merely disputes about alleged findings regarding neuro-physiological deviances or patterns of social formation; they concern the very logic of disease and mental disorder.