Schizotypy: Implications for Illness and Health

Abstract

The central thesis of "Schizotypy: Implications for Illness and Health" is both challenging and controversial: that the features of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia actually lie on a continuum with, and form part of, normal behaviour and experience. The dispositional or 'schizotypal' traits associated with psychotic disorders certainly predispose an individual to mental illness, but they may also lead to positive outcomes such as enhanced creativity or spiritual experience. Discussion of each aspect of this theme is supported by experimental and clinical evidence, questioning the received medical wisdom which treats psychotic illness in the narrow context of neurological disease.