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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.

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