Kieran McNally previously studied and worked at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. He is currently Adjunct Lecturer in Psychology at University College Dublin, Ireland, specializing in the history of psychiatry. He is also the author of the ecological and social history, The Island Imagined by the Sea.

There are only two books directly comparable with this book. The first is:Howells, J. G. (1991). The concept of schizophrenia: Historical perspectives. Washington, DC:American Psychiatric Press.Though very good in certain parts, this book is old and lacks overall unity because it was the work of several authors. It is also weak because it is a valedictory account of schizophrenia rather than a critical analysis. The style of history it embraces is now considered mostly outdated, and 'new historians' would object to a number of its research approaches and assumptions. In addition, the book is out of print. I believe the facts that my book, does not have these weaknesses and that it incorporates more than two decades of new scholarship would be sufficient to make it more desirable for potential readers.The second book is: Noll R. (2012). American Madness: The history of Dementia Praecox.`(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).This work is an excellent overview of the history of dementia praecox and has been well received. In the absence of a history of schizophrenia, people will naturally turn to this book, which deals with the primary precursor to schizophrenia. The subject matter of the two concepts is vast. My approach deals in detail with the conceptual development of schizophrenia, whereas his is largely concerned with the exploration of dementia praecox in early 20th century North America. In many respects the books complement each other, but I would hope that readers interested in schizophrenia would turn first to a history of schizophrenia rather than a history of dementia praecox if the choice were available.

Schizophrenia was psychiatry's arch concept of madness in the twentieth century. However, it was a concept that was both surprisingly problematic and contentious.

This book explores schizophrenia's instability, as the concept changed across the 20th century. It moves beyond sensational accounts of kids on LSD and split personalities, to detail schizophrenia's historically problematic definition, diagnosis, and symptom profile. In doing so, Kieran McNally documents the social uses of the concept, its regional variations, and its fluctuating subtypes. And finally, the book explains how, and why, North American psychiatry sought to improve the concept in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), by introducing group sanctioned operational definitions.

This book reveals a tradition of critical unease towards the concept of schizophrenia and it reveals that criticism of the concept was consistently voiced by many leading schizophrenia researchers - and not just by 'anti-psychiatrists'. It becomes clear that at no stage in its history was schizophrenia thought to be beyond improvement.