Chris Frith

Psychosis, apathy, withdrawal... Schizophrenia strikes at the core of what it is to grapple with reality, including one's social surroundings. As such, it's not only a baffling and startling illness but also a scary one. Deluded, irrational, out-of-touch: are its sufferers dangerous then? Of all mental illnesses, there's no denying that schizophrenia scores high in being misunderstood, prejudiced, stigmatised. Just think about how hysterical (and ignorant) the mass medias delight in show more systematically mis-portraying it each time a violent crime is committed by a schizophrenic person! And yet...

'It's easy to understand why accounts of the illness elicit fears, but, rather, they should elicit sympathy.'

The authors, a Professor of Neuropsychology and a Professor of Psychiatry (it takes two to tackle such an elusive condition!) are interesting, because, having worked in the field for the past four decades they not only witnessed incredible medical advances (eg neuro-imaging, genetics…) but, also, deinstitutionalisation that is, the massive social shift in how we deal with the mentally ill (the closing down of the asylums, and patients being released into the community).

Here's what is supposed to be an 'introduction'. Well, tighten up because it's quite dense! They spare nothing, and from the difficulties to define it, let alone diagnose it, up to how society perceive schizophrenics, here's a remarkable crash course. Its debatable features, speculative causes (both biological and environmental), the drugs available to treat some of its symptoms... They dedicate whole chapters to each topic, offering thus an insightful picture of an elusive disorder.

It's intense, but fascinating. Indeed, as it turns out, understanding schizophrenia, because it goes right at the core of how we cope with our surrounding reality, is to better understand human nature. There is no other illness demonstrating how plainly that 'the boundary between normality and psychosis is not clear-cut'. As such, affected or not by it, this in-depth introduction therefore talks to us all.

A highly recommended read... Even if it's just to stay clear from the mediatic idiocies we are all too familiar with! show less

A stigmatizing, dehumanizing, completely mainstream biomedical approach to "schizophrenia". Hogwash and offensive. I own it for reference, but to make a person so-diagnosed read this book would be a retraumatization. Shameful.

I read this to gain some background knowledge for a psychology assignment, but I found myself citing a few relevant points for the essay itself.

This book is a very concise and interesting introduction to the subject of schizophrenia, that has a surprising amount of breadth and depth for its short length. This introduction manages to introduce one to most areas of research regarding schizophrenia, including the history, treatments and fairly up to date research findings, without becoming too show more dry to hold the attentions of the laymen.

If you have even a passing interest in this mental disorder then I would wholeheartedly recommend you read this book, as it is the perfect place to start, and, due to its rather short length (though not as short as the title would have you believe) it can be read rather easily in a few hours. show less

Frith examines the current evidence of how our brain generates our mental image of ourselves and the world. He first explores how our brain creates an image of ourselves and the world that can have very little in common with reality. Then he describes the brain as a mind making machine, which gives us the power to understand ourselves and others.
Our brains use all signals possible to make models of the surrounding environment, which are constantly verified and improved upon. The same show more process is used by our brain to find out what’s happening in other people’s minds, to the extent that if somebody tells us about the experience our brain changes as if we ourselves had the experience in question. (It’s probably one of the reasons why many of us read books, isn’t it?). Our brain does not inform us about much it knows and it processes on a regular basis- it knows much more than it lets us know. It constantly adjusts and verifies the models of behavior, and makes us respond accordingly. What’s more, the idea that we make a decision based on our free will and then tell the brain what to do is a complete illusion. It’s the brain that makes the decision, and lets us know what we will do. In that respect there is no duality of the mind and the brain- it is one, and the feeling that we are something separate, an autonomous being, is just an illusion. There is a reason though for us to behave as if we were making deliberate choices according to Frith. He sees that reason in group behavior: punishing ‘free riders’ and rewarding fair behavior. That way we can reward those who behave fairly and punish those who don’t, and through this we maintain our willingness to live in a group and cooperate, which in turn makes us willing to build societies and cultures.

I found the book quite interesting and well written, and the author very well read in literary fiction as well, which is always a bonus.

Quotes that illustrate well what the book is about:

“But the ‘I’ that narrates this book and then vanishes on the final page is no different from the other ‘I’, Chris Frith, who wakes from nothing every morning at about 7 a.m. and vanishes again every night. I am not sure which of us is writing these final pages, but in both cases this ‘I’ is created by my brain.
Throughout this book I have adopted the convention of distinguishing between me and my brain. So when objects are perceived and actions are performed without thought or awareness, then I say my brain does it. But for conscious experience and conscious actions and decisions, then I say that ‘I’ do it. But I am not a dualist. This ‘I’ that deliberately does things is also created by my brain.”

‘We are embedded in the mental worlds of others just as we are embedded in the physical world. What we are currently doing and thinking is molded by whomever we are interacting with. But this is not how we experience ourselves. We experience ourselves as agents with minds of our own. This is the final illusion created by our brains.”

“By making models of the minds of others (in the same way that it makes models of the physical world), my brain enables me to enter a shared mental world. By sharing my mental world with others, I can also learn from their experiences and adopt the models of others that are better than my own. From this process, truth and progress can emerge, but so can deception and mass delusions.” show less