Schizophrenia and paranoia as solutions to predictive failure

Abstract

Paranoia and schizophrenia represent two opposite ways of reacting to invalidation. In paranoia the system tends to become more and more monolithic. Whenever the paranoid individual's observations contradict his or her personal theory, the theory prevails, so that the system evolves toward an “exaggerated dogmatism.” In the schizophrenic syndrome, on the other hand, we find renunciation of a unitary organization of knowledge. In this form of an “exaggerated empiricism,” the system moves toward fragmentation, and predictions become variable and contradictory. The path that is followed depends on the premorbid structure of the individual's system and the particular kind of invalidation experienced.