ABSTRACT
A review of evidence concerning the genetic basis of the disorder called 'schizophrenia' would be more than incomplete without some attempt to place it within a historical perspective. My purpose is not to provide an account of past work on which more recent approaches have been built, but to illustrate that the fundamental issues have changed little over the past century. Of course, theorizing about the mode of genetic inheritance has altered with developments in the field of genetics generally, but the underlying attempts to establish schizophrenia as genetically determined have been pursued with greater or lesser conviction since disordered conduct was first construed as some form of illness. It is my contention that this medicalization process required as a cornerstone the resort to biological explanation, and that this, in turn, could only gain scientific respectability if the source of the disorder could be located in genetic transmission. Evidence for this assertion will be provided later in the chapter.
