Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Ends of a Diagnosis
1 From the Bible to Bleuler
2 Kraepelin, Bleuler, and the Birth of “the Schizophrenias”
3 Psychoanalysis and Schizophrenia 
4 The Legacy of the DSM: “The Schizophrenic” as a Moving Target
5 Hearing Voices
6 Schizophrenia and Stigma: Considering a Name Change
7 A Beautiful or Split Mind: The Ethical Implications of a Diagnosis

Notes
Index

About the Author

Orna Ophir is an Associate Director of the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy & the Arts, Weill Cornell Medical College, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University, where she teaches at The Gallatin School for Individualized Studies and is affiliated with the Department of Comparative Literature. Ophir is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), serving on its Committee on the History of Psychoanalysis.

Reviews

“Ophir’s survey of schizophrenia is magisterial. Diagnostic categorization has served general medicine and physical health very well. But this book conveys that we may have to consider such a process as abnormal, even inhuman, when it comes to personal experiences.”
Robert Hinshelwood, psychoanalyst and author “We have long awaited a history of schizophrenia that brings to bear a deep understanding of that word’s past and present. This excellent look backwards will become a new starting point for us to better consider our future.”
George Makari, MD, author of Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia “A superb account of the vicissitudes of the schizophrenia concept.”
Ruth Leys, Johns Hopkins University

“captivating […] thoughtful and compassionate”
History Today “Ophir covers this ground skillfully, piquing the interests of readers coming from many different backgrounds and disciplines.”
Meghan Wildhood, Mad in America