Dangerous Mind - Psychology Essay example

Almost all of thisnew knowledge about the causes is a product of the last ten years, and the next ten years promise to increase our under standing evenfurther.<br><br>There are still several theories about the causes of schizophrenia, and they have to do with what we now know about the physical aspects of the disease. First of all schizophrenia is a brain disease, probably several brain diseases that altogether produce the symptoms. Also the brains of schizophrenics are different from those of people without the disease. When I say different I mean that in fact some areas of schizophrenics brains are shaped different or just smaller than those same areas would be in a normal persons brain (Torrey 111). The area of the brain that seems to be responsible for schizophrenia is limbic system and it's connections. The limbic system is the part of the brain through which most incoming stimulus must pass. According to Dr.. Paul McLean, The father of the limbic system, it has "selective, integrative, and unifying functions by which raw experience is armonized into reality and coherent activity is organized" (Torrey 78). In other words it is the part of the brain that interprets reality throuhg what we hear, see, touch and smell.<br><br>At one time the most widely accepted theory about the cause of schizophrenia was stress and family interactions. These aspects began with Freud, who in 1911 published his analysis of a paranoid schizophrenic, which was the first