Equality in the face of Madness?

Event details

Date	05.12.2013
Hour	18:30
Speaker	Prof. Gordon Claridge
Location	Uni-Mail, Genève, salle MR 280
Category	Conferences - Seminars

When do we slip into a mental disorder? Gordon Claridge, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford, has devoted his career to demonstrate that states of madness, such as schizophrenia, represent an exaggeration of an already existing character that is called schizotypy. Contesting the categorical views of madness, Gordon Claridge adopts a view that posits a continuum between normality and pathology. Although schizotypy is partly hereditary, Gordon Claridge particularly opposes genetic theories of schizophrenia which argue that characteristic genes lead only to illness. He proposes, in contrast, that schizotypy is a healthy adaptive personality trait, present in all of us and often associated with the positive side of human nature, such as creativity.