ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between Joseph Gabel’s theorizing and the concept of schizophrenia as more generally defined. The concept of “schizophrenia” was at its birth unsound- a ragbag concerning neurosis, manic-depression, and other forms of psychosis. Beginning in 1923 Eugene Minkowski argued for a pure form of schizophrenia called morbid rationalism, a condition known by its symptom of antithetical attitudes. In 1927 Minkowski published his book on schizophrenia, the first significant French study of the problem. While trying to formulate a pure definition of schizophrenia, Minkowski insisted on a specifiable structure of disturbed thought, whereas Gabel advanced this concept from the clinical format into the broader delusions of the collective. Schizophrenics and absolutist ideologists share a systematic recourse to intellectually indefensible logical categories. Morbid rationalism was the clinical proof that a key to understanding schizophrenics, as well as nonpsychotic mental life, lay in the general area of dialectics.
