ABSTRACT

Introduction Exploration of Planet Psychosis began with an expedition by Alzheimer over a hundred years ago. Like all subsequent visits over the following seventy years, it failed to find any convincing signs of life. This led one space commentator to describe the whole endeavour as a graveyard (Plum, 1972). However, reports that the planet was dead were premature. Later expeditions, using the more advanced techniques that have become available to collect and analyse samples, have begun to reveal evidence for traces of life. While these fall well short of a defining life form (i.e., a diagnostic neuropathology, or an unequivocal-and unequivocally interpretable-neuropathological correlate of schizophrenia), they do provide clues as to the nature of the planet and the type of life that characterizes it (Harrison, 1999; Harrison, Lewis, & Kleinman, 2011). As Dr McCoy might have said, “It’s neuropathology, Jim (or Robin), but not as we know it.”