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Theory & Psychology
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`Schizophrenic Person' or `Person with Schizophrenia'?

An Essay on Illness and the Self

Louis A. Sass

Rutgers University, Department of Clinical Psychology, GSAPP-Rutgers University, 152 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

Most contemporary experts and mental health advocates would reject the term `schizophrenic', whether used as noun or adjective. The terminology they prefer—`person with schizophrenia'—seems safely to nominalize the ailment and set it apart from the afflicted person, treating the disease entity as a foreign body. The present essay does not advocate rejecting the current terminology. It offers a critical perspective on the contemporary consensus by considering three aspects of schizophrenia that current terminology downplays or denies: (1) how schizophrenia may not merely hijack but actually transform the self; (2) how schizophrenic psychosis may grow out of a particular personality orientation, thus representing the culmination of a personal trajectory or mode of being; (3) how schizophrenic modes of being can sometimes involve, often in paradoxical ways, certain forms of intentionality, self-awareness, commitment or even quasi-volitional choice. Several disadvantages of the `person with schizophrenia' formula are considered: (1) conceptual oversimplification of the psychological realities of schizophrenia; (2) forms of stigmatizing inherent in the biomedical disease model; (3) closing down a potential `dialogue with madness'.

Key Words: diagnosis • illness • personhood • psychosis • schizophrenia • self • volition

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 17, No. 3, 395-420 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354307073152
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