精神分裂症正名乎？

To Be Renaming the Term of “Schizophrenia”? The Question of “to Be” or “Not to Be”

“If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic”. The above arguments were written by Szasz in 1973 . The disease of schizophrenia, was fi rst identifi ed as a discrete mental illness by Emil Kraepelin in 1887. The illness itself is generally believed to have accompanied the mankind through the history. In 1906, Eugen Bleuler who fi rst introduced the term of schizophrenia, described a splitting between thought and emotional responses, suggesting the idea of “split personality.” Recently, a trend of renaming the term of schizophrenia has been raised by several researchers and psychiatrists in Taiwan. A question whether we need to rename the term of schizophrenia needs to be assessed. In fact, the underlying issues should be discussed fi rst, no matter what we choose to rename or to keep the term of “schizophrenia.”