Abstract
A sociologist Mend has had to remind me repeatedly that few things can be understood without considering their context. Piaget emphasized the same message, focusing especially on longitudinal context, the context of developmental trajectory. Although we tend to think of schizophrenia in its pure form with hallucinations, delusions, formal thought disorder, and perhaps abnormal affect, that is our abstraction. Schizophrenia never exists in a pure form. The focus of this chapter is that the person context is not trivial but is essential to understanding the meaning and nature of schizophrenia.
The author wishes to express gratitude to Drs. Barbara Hanson, Larry Davidson, and to the persons with severe mental disorder who have participated in our research. This chapter is supported in part by NIMH grants #MH00340 and MH34365 a grant from the National Alliance for research in Schizophrenia and Depression, and a grant from the Scottish Rite Foundation.
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© 1991 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
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Strauss, J.S. (1991). The Meaning of Schizophrenia: Compared to What?. In: Flack, W.F., Wiener, M., Miller, D.R. (eds) What Is Schizophrenia?. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9157-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9157-9_7
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