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Michael Bunzel and asked him for some brief explanatory remarks
to impart some clarity about the disease schizophrenia, its definition
and effects. His response follows:

          Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common form of the
          disease. Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness covering
          a broad spectrum of disorders common to all of which are
          confusion between the real and the imagined, impaired cog-
          nitive function and impaired ability to cope with reality. The
          meaning of the term schizophrenia is “split mind” (schizo-
          split, phrenia-mind, and the Hebrew term for this disease is
          shasaat from shesa-split). Until as recently as several years ago
          schizophrenia was thought of as a functional abnormality
          rather than as a disease, primarily on account of the absence
          of any pathological or biological factors to account for the
          various symptoms. Nowadays, these biological and organic
          factors are increasingly coming to light and schizophrenia
          is defined as a true disease, affecting the sufferer’s ability to
          work, study, maintain interpersonal relations and more.

             Although schizophrenia lacks a standard set of symptoms
          shared by all sufferers the symptoms share several common-
          ly encountered characteristics, which can be divided into
          “positive” symptoms [i.e. abnormal behaviors superimposed
          onto normal behavior e.g. delusions], which are referred to
          as psychotic symptoms and “negative” symptoms [which
          manifest as lower level functioning than normal e.g. reduced
          emotional expression].

             Schizophrenic patients suffer from disrupted thoughts.
          Their chain of thought is convoluted and unintelligible.
          A schizophrenic patient will sometimes utter a jumble of
          words that are unconnected with one another. The patient’s
          disturbed thoughts often give rise to types of delusional
          thinking – he will imagine that others are able to read his
          thoughts and even to control them. Patients frequently suf-
          fer from paranoia, the belief that they are being pursued.

Marriage for Schizophrenics 2                                                213
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