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The formally disordered thought of schizophrenic patients is usually interpreted as a manifestation of developmentally primitive modes of consciousness. Through a comparison between certain schizophreniform symptoms and aspects of modernist art and literature, I argue for an alternative view, one
Louis A. Sass, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University.
This article, an earlier version of which was delivered in January 1983 to the Social Science Seminar of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., is part of a larger ongoing project on madness and modernism. I wish to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Advanced Study for fellowship support. I am very grateful to the following individuals for their comments on earlier versions of this article or for their interest and support: Melvin Feffer, Philip Fisher, Angus Fletcher, Clifford Geertz, Howard Gruber, John Gunderson, Robin Lakoff, Wolf Lepenies, Ann Sass, and Margaret Thalet Singer.
that emphasizes the defensive and disruptive role played by various forms of excessive self-consciousness (pathological reflexivity).