[Ads-l] Neglected Popular Sense of "Schizophrenia" and "Schizophrenic"

[Laurence Horn]

AHD5 has this somewhat censorious Usage Note:

Usage Note: Mental health advocates point out that the figurative use of schizophrenic to mean “displaying disparate or antagonistic elements” arises from misconceptions about schizophrenia and that this figurative use impedes efforts to educate the public about schizophrenia.
 
When I was growing up and first becoming acquainted with the term, I did indeed gather it referred to split personality or what I later learned should be called multiple personality disorder.  This would have been in the 1950s. Webster’s NID3 (1961) has “split personality” as the second sense for “schizophrenia” after the (much longer) psychiatrically correct (at the time) first sense.  

LH


> On Sep 13, 2022, at 10:52 PM, Chris Waigl <chris at LASCRIBE.NET> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 6:34 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Both OED and Merriam-Webster seem to completely neglect an extremely
>> widespread popular sense of the words "schizophrenia" and "schizophrenic."
>> This sense is the meaning "split personality."  Although that meaning is
>> scientifically incorrect, I believe that, at least in the U.S., it is the
>> predominant popular definition.
>> 
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by this, outside some rather dated fictional
> stories along the lines of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde or Hitchcock's Psycho. In
> common contemporary parlance I think the predominant popular definition is
> more along the lines of "jarringly paradoxical" or "internally
> contradictory". (I base this purely on anecdote-level personal observation,
> not scientific research - disclaimer.)
> 
> Chris
> 
> -- 
> Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
> http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu
> 
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