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The curious title of this book immediately confronts us with a number of questions, many of which have received considerable attention over the years. Does schizophrenia exist? If so, is it an illness? Is it something that can be ‘resolved’? What is the relationship between psychiatry and psychoanalysis? Is there a psychoanalytic view of schizophrenia and the relationship between psychiatry and psychoanalysis, or a number of different views within the various psychoanalytic schools and traditions? Although the author does not discuss in any detail these underlying issues directly, it would be a mistake to imagine that she does not take up a position in regard to them. One reason why it is important to say this is because the complex history of madness - in its varying forms - shows how difficult it is to pin the concept down as it shifts across a series of intersecting intellectual landscapes. Thus, answers to the question ‘What is madness?’ vary considerably depending not only on the discourse within which the question is posed but also on when one asks the question. In other words, our understanding of madness is closely linked to what Wittgenstein (1953) called its ‘language game’ as well as to its chronology. Not only within this chronology do we find gradual changes in its meaning, but also key moments at which what it means to be mad is dramatically re-conceptualised. Indeed, different insanities not only emerge and disappear, they also coexist. Still others re-appear in new guises. Yet all of them are closely related to questions of belief and power. The power both of individuals - for example, the healer in antiquity, the priest or the doctor - and of the shifting influence of institutions such as the Church, medicine, and pharmaceutical companies. And a belief that ‘truth’ is disclosed in the discourse, whether that be conceived allegorically or literally. Of