schizophrenia
- 1A psychiatric diagnosis for a persistent, often chronic mental illness marked by abnormal perception, thinking, behavior and emotion, often with delusions.
Doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia after he began hearing voices that no one else could hear.
Researchers are studying whether heavy cannabis use in the teenage years raises the risk of schizophrenia.
Note
Eugen Bleuler built the name in German from Greek skhízō, "to split", and phrḗn, "mind", a word that also covered the heart and the diaphragm. That split mind is the source of a long confusion: people hear two selves in it, which is the "several personalities" misuse, while the illness itself disturbs how a person perceives and thinks, not how many selves they have.
- 2Dissociative identity disorder, a condition in which a person is supposed to have several distinct personalities, a use of the word now considered incorrect.
In the pulp thriller, the killer's schizophrenia hides a second, gentler self that knows nothing of the murders.
Old science fiction treated schizophrenia as a handy plot device: two personalities in one body, neither aware of the other.
Note
Careful writers treat this use as a mistake: a person said to have several distinct personalities has dissociative identity disorder, and the psychiatric illness is a different condition. Popular writing of the 1940s used it freely; in George O. Smith's story Trouble, in Astounding Science-Fiction, a personality B dreams up schemes that a personality A puts to practical use.
- 3A state in which very different or contradictory activities exist side by side, or a failure to decide between options.
The band's second album suffers from a certain schizophrenia, lurching between gentle folk songs and loud punk.
The city's planning schizophrenia, widening highways while promoting bike lanes, leaves residents confused.
Similarinconsistency, incoherence, contradiction
Oppositeconsistency, coherence
Note
The figure rests on the popular split-mind picture behind the "several personalities" use, not on the illness itself. It usually comes qualified, a certain schizophrenia, a political schizophrenia, and describes institutions, policies or works pulling two ways at once; for people, words like torn or inconsistent say the same without borrowing a diagnosis.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of schizophrenia apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From German Schizophrenie, coined by Eugen Bleuler from Ancient Greek skhízō (“to split”) + phrḗn (“mind, heart, diaphragm”) + English -ia; a combination of schizo- + -phrenia.