The term ‘schizophrenia’ stems from the from Greek words skhizein, which means ‘to split’, and phrēn, meaning ‘mind’. The initial thought was that the mind splits in some sense: not, as is sometimes thought, into multiple personalities; but rather into a fragmented and alienated personality, usually beginning in late adolescence or early adulthood. Beyond this, the condition is also most centrally characterised largely in light of psychosis, hearing voices, paranoia, a general sense of apathy, and flat or fluctuating moods and emotions. When all these characteristics emerge together in one person to what is deemed a ‘clinically significant’ level, that person is taken within institutional psychiatry to “have” schizophrenia.
In general, these traits are almost universally though to be inherently harmful deviations from the norm, and together they are taken to somehow destroy or at least radically damage the previously existing person. Given this, schizophrenia (and related…
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Autism Candles 