• ARTICLES

The schizococcus: an interpersonal perspective

Salmon, P.

Keywords:
schizophrenia, thought disorder, intersubjectivity, personal construct psychology

Abstract:
Forty years ago, Don Bannister’s ground-breaking research on schizophrenic thought disorder suggested that the problem should be understood as a loosening of individual construing. Thought disordered schizophrenics were seen as loose construers when making sense of other people, and this, it was proposed, was the result of serial invalidation. Although Don derided medical accounts as a search for the ‘schizococcus’, his own understanding was still couched in intrapsychic terms. In this article, it is argued that we might usefully think of this and other problems not as residing within people, but between them.