In Pursuit of Schizophrenia

<p>This volume is a collection of scholarly editorial and personal commentaries (Chapters) on schizophrenia with special attention directed toward the consequences of imprecision in professional and scientific thought and practice because of our failure to accept schizophrenia is a construct. A construct is a term word concept subject to denotative and connotative semantic abuses and limitations.</p><p>The reification of a construct in the absence of substantial research confirmation leads to disorders in our professional and scientific thought and practice which scholars have termed epistemopathologies.</p><p>This is the irony and the tragedy as schizophrenia has acquired widespread acceptance and use as a medical/psychiatric/political diagnostic label. The label serves a mental health industry but does little to explain or describe the etiology expressions and care of individuals assigned the term.</p><p>A central issue is the commitment to reductionism as a conceptual and methodological pillar for the mental health industry. Reductionism is an ideology legitimizing medical solutions for critical widespread social political economic and moral problems.</p><p>The ideology is apparent in the construct of schizophrenia where utility arguments for the continued medical diagnoses treatments and professional roles deny issues of validity. This volume explores historical conceptual and cultural sources of our continuing use and abuse of the construct of schizophrenia as a questionable foundation for a mental health industry perpetuating and tolerating imprecision.</p>