Perceptual Defect and Role Handicap: Missing Links in Explaining the Aetiology of Schizophrenia

Abstract

The immense literature on schizophrenia abounds in discoveries of single associations between the symptoms of the disease and certain other factors. Braithwaite (1960) says in speaking about “science like psychology and the social sciences which make great use of tendency statements… that to assert an isolated tendency statement is to say very little”. Such isolated statements in themselves are not explanations. A theory, on the other hand, interprets information; it explains.