Discussion

It is a very pleasant assignment to discuss Dr. Sheiner's “The Schizophrenic Process: Some Further Considerations,” a subject of great interest to me. I enjoyed particularly Dr. Sheiner's bold use of her imaginings, sensings and subjective responses as she described the evolution of her ideas about schizophrenia over a twenty-year period. Discussants at scientific meetings sometimes speak in the first person, but papers are usually presented in the impersonal scientific style, full of third-person pronouns and complex circumlocutions which serve to hide the unique human qualities of the author.

Reading Dr. Sheiner's paper, I was reminded of the instructions which appeared in the magazine Science in July, 1963. The editors suggested that authors “choose the active voice rather than the passive; use first person, not third…” An astronomer sent an enthusiastic letter to the editors saying, “The word I has been forbidden to appear in scientific journals … but there is nothing more conducive to felicitous writing than a judicious use of I and we. I should be used whenever the opinion, hope or judgment of the author is involved, that is, when the author becomes important to the reader as a person.” It is obvious that Dr. Sheiner's opinions, hopes and judgments are the core schizophrenia is the history of hopes, judgments, intuitions, or to use Dr. Sheiner's word, sensings, from which we attempt to grasp what goes on behind the façade of the schizophrenic. Often we have little more than such sensings upon which to construct theories. It is quite clear that Dr. Sheiner has grasped much of the essence of the schizo-personal instrument of therapy and investigation. The history of the psychotherapy of of her paper, and that she is important as the phrenic process. The problem, as always, is to render this essence in simple words and in terms of ordinary experience when the schizophrenic process itself is so complex and so different from ordinary experience. Ordinary language ge