Memoir and the Diagnosis of Schizophrenia: Reflections on The Center Cannot Hold, Me, Myself, and Them , and the 'Crumbling Twin Pillars' of Kraepelinian Psychiatry

The Mental Health Review
Angela M Woods

Abstract

In 1896 Emil Kraepelin revolutionised the classification of psychosis by identifying what he argued were two natural disease entities: manic-depressive psychosis (bipolar disorder) and dementia praecox (schizophrenia). Kraepelin's twin pillars have governed psychiatric thinking, practice and research for over a century. However, a growing number of researchers, clinicians, and mental health service users argue contest the claim that there are fundamental differences between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and call for a symptom-led approach which prioritises subjective experience over diagnostic category. How can the published first-person accounts of experts by experience contribute to this debate? This short paper looks at the representation of psychiatric diagnosis in two much-lauded autobiographies: Kurt Snyder's Me, Myself, and Them: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person's Experience with Schizophrenia (2007) and Elyn Saks' The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2007). As well as providing a prognosis and a plan for treatment, the psychiatric diagnosis of schizophrenia, for both these writers, gives shape and meaning to the illness experience and ultimately becomes the pivot or platform from which identi...Continue Reading

References

Jul 22, 2006·Psychiatry Research·C Raymond Lake, Nathaniel Hurwitz
Jun 7, 2007·Schizophrenia Bulletin·Michael J OwenAssen Jablensky
Jan 8, 2008·History of Psychiatry·Talya Greene
May 22, 2008·Schizophrenia Bulletin·Stephan Heckers
Feb 2, 2010·The British Journal of Psychiatry : the Journal of Mental Science·Nick Craddock, Michael J Owen
Apr 2, 2010·The British Journal of Psychiatry : the Journal of Mental Science·David Goldberg
Aug 4, 2010·The British Journal of Psychiatry : the Journal of Mental Science·Nick Craddock, Michael J Owen

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Citations

May 23, 2013·Journal of Mental Health·Angela Woods
Jan 4, 2022·Journal of Mental Health·Kelsey A LudwigDavid L Penn

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