RT Journal
A1 Meehl PE
T1 SChizotaxia revisited
JF Archives of General Psychiatry
JO Archives of General Psychiatry
YR 1989
FD October 1
VO 46
IS 10
SP 935
OP 944
DO 10.1001/archpsyc.1989.01810100077015
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1989.01810100077015
AB • A conjectured neural integrative defect (schizotaxia), due to a dominant schizogene completely penetrant for a parametric aberration in synaptic signal selectivity (hypokrisia), gives rise under ordinary social learning regimes to schizotypy, a personality showing ambivalence, aversive drift, dereism, autism, and cognitive slippage. Given unfavorable polygenic potentiators (eg, introversion, hypohedonia, and anxiety) and adverse life experiences (eg, childhood trauma or adult misfortune), around 10% develop schizophrenia. That schizophrenia is basically a neurologic disorder does not contradict whatever is known about its psychodynamics, nor preclude efficacy for psychotherapy or other psychosocial interventions. Research should concentrate on soft neurology and psychophysiology as indicators, being closer in the causal chain to the schizogene than psychometric, social, or high-level cognitive processes. Taxometric statistics are appropriate to testing a major locus model not simplistically formulated.