ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the origins and development of schizophrenia as well as manic-depression and psychopathy, two other major pathologies of the modern mind. In the early twentieth century, psychopathy began to be associated with negative evaluations of socially harmful personality types. Between 1920 and 1940, schizophrenia replaced dementia praecox in western psychiatry, and it became by far the most common and widespread, and most mysterious, mental illness of the twentieth century. Between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, manic-depressive insanity was transformed into 'bipolar disorder', which was divided into Type 1 and Type 2. The bipolar I disorders referred to patients who had been hospitalized for both manic and depressive episodes. By contrast, patients suffering from bipolar II disorders had been hospitalized for depression only. The chapter concludes that throughout the twentieth century, schizophrenia remained the most diagnosed severe mental illness, and the majority of institutionalized patients suffered from schizophrenia.
