When a Mind Breaks Down: A Brief History of Efforts to Understand Schizophrenia (original) (raw)

The author explores how the psychiatric concept of schizophrenia has evolved over time and offers a brief overview of the most well-known trends in biological research. He claims that contemporary neuroscientific studies have started to focus on more subtle interactions between biological and environmental (early biological insults, use of illicit drugs, etc.) as well as social determinants (including traumatic childhood experiences, severe mental illness of caregivers, etc.). Taken together, these are viewed as contributing factors in the development of schizophrenia. The author then reconsiders Berne's metaphor of the coins and its enlightening relationship not only to psychodevelopment but, more importantly, to the pathogenesis of schizophrenic psychoses. At the same time, he envisages the practical working out of such a relationship for advancing the transactional analysis understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. The article concludes with a brief discussion of recent contributions to this subject in the TA literature with an emphasis on the need for transactional analysts to explore different theories and integrate other therapeutic methodologies within a more contemporary transactional analysis approach to schizophrenia.