Lately, I have been thinking about my colleague Martti Siirala and his profound theories on the human condition we call schizophrenia. Martti had been writing about the role of culture and collective splitting as well as transgenerational transmission of trauma (he called it "transfer of burden") in the psychotic disorders many years ago.

Finnish psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Martti Siirala (1983) noted:

“This implies that a manifest schizophrenia is part of a common darkness, not only the darkness of an individual or a family. Traditionally we tend to conceive of schizophrenia as a disturbance in the normal life process: a disturbance in an individual’s existence, brain, mind or metabolism, in interpersonal relationships, in family dynamics...Schizophrenia is presented here more as a general human situation, one that centers around a manifestly split individual but emerges out of a common soil of sickness: a sickness shared by the others, the healthy” (p.19).

I think Martti touches on a valid point that is so easily disregarded today as being non-scientific. Yet current research, emerging primarily out of Europe, e.g., the research of Jim van Os and colleagues in the Netherlands, is demonstrating the significant role of social experience in the inception and course of the schizophrenias.

This passage is taken from his:

Siirala, M. (1983 ). From Transfer to Transference: Seven Essays on the

Human Predicament. Helsinki University Press .

Brian Koehler
New York University