Diversifying Dialogues: How Schizophrenia-Centred Neuro-Memoirs Challenge Understandings of Otherness

Schizophrenia is often described as enigmatic, mystifying, and something to be feared; the individual with a diagnosis being seen as the Other to a supposed ‘norm’, the ‘them’ to a non-schizophrenia diagnosed ‘us’. This thesis takes an underexamined area of life-writing, centred around schizophrenia, and through my critical engagement with the sub-genre I define as the schizophrenia-centred neuro-memoir, studies examples of such narratives in order to challenge the foundational understandings and myths that cause divisive Othering. A prevalent dimension of the schizophrenia-centred neuro-memoir is that it seeks to explain how a person experiences the disabling condition whilst rewriting social, political, and emotional understandings of the said condition. This thesis is divided into two sections, the first section uses sociological frameworks relating to illness and disability to contextualise how schizophrenia, as a disabling psychiatric condition, is understood within twenty-first-century Anglo-American society. An overview of schizophrenia as a condition is provided before an understanding of the genre-specific features of the schizophrenia-centred neuro-memoir are outlined: features that include not only the writing back as a critique to dominant narratives of schizophrenia but a diversification of the dialogues that surround the condition. In the second section, five schizophrenia-centred neuro-memoirs are read across a series of three close readings. The close readings use practical examples from the texts to illustrate; the multiplicity of ‘us v them’ divides that can surround an individual who associates with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the ways in which knowledge is valued and shared in relation to a medical condition, and the need that exists within society to recognise and appreciate the neurodiverse nature of human lives. The intention of these close readings is to ensure that the voices and experiences of those with schizophrenia are heard and valued without being reduced to individual symptoms.