No diagnosis of mental disorder is more important or more disputable
than that of "schizophrenia." The 1982 case of John Hinckley, who shot
President Reagan, brought both aspects of this diagnostic dilemma to the
forefront of national attention. It became evident to the general public
that the experts engaged to study him exhaustively could not agree on
whether Hinckley was schizophrenic. General public outrage ensued, as
schizophrenia, "the sacred symbol of psychiatry," in the words of Thomas
Szasz (1976), emerged as a king of Alice in Wonderland travesty. Schizo-
phrenia seemed not to be a legitimate diagnostic entity but some sort of
facade erected to protect the guilty. In 1973, David Rosenhan had
already shown the readers of Science that schizo- phrenia was a label
that could be given to normal people presenting with a supposed auditory
hallucination on even one occasion. In Rosenhan's studies, mental health
professionals were outclassed by the regular psychiatric hospital
patients, who cor- rectly saw the false schizophrenics as imposters
while the professional diagnosticians continued to fool themselves.