Schizophrenia : a scientific delusion?
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Schizophrenia : a scientific delusion?
Routledge, 1990
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Note
Bibliography: p. 227-242
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The idea of "schizophrenia" as a disease has become profoundly influential both within the medical profession and amongst the general public. So strong is this idea that those who criticize it are apt to be dismissed as being either ignorant of the latest research or indifferent to the fate of the "mentally ill". This book challenges such ideas by offering a detailed critique of the origins and development of the concept and diagnosis of schizophrenia. Mary Boyle shows how such diagnoses did and still do rely on opinion rather than evidence, how they were characterized by conceptual confusion, and how subsequent research has been misrepresented. She therefore questions the validity of schizophrenia as illness, but emphasizes thatm this is not to deny the existence of bizarre behaviour. She offers alternative interpretations of such behaviour, and points out the need to ask searching questions about the labelling of some behaviour as symptomatic of mental illness. By focusing not on schizophrenics, but on those who diagnose schizophrenia, this book will undoubtedly attract some criticism and debate.
Yet her approach allows the author to question traditional interpretations of bizarre behaviour, and to make more central the social and ethical issues which surround it.
Table of Contents
- Evaluating the validity of schizophrenia
- the background - events leading up to the introduction of schizophrenia
- the necessary conditions for inferring schizophrenia - the work of Kraeplin, Bleuler and Schneider
- the official correspondence rules for inferring schizophrenia - the development of diagnostic criteria
- the official correspondence rules for inferring schizophrenia - DSM-111 and schizophrenia genetic research
- an analysis of argumetns used to support schizophrenia
- why has schizophrenia survived
- living without schizophrenia - issues and some alternatives.
by "Nielsen BookData"
