Romanticism and Schizophrenia. Second part: The Intimacy hypothesis

Abstract

In the first part of this article we have analyzed the evidence supporting the recency hypothesis of schizophrenia and also what we can call the intimate nature of the disease. In this part we highlight the role of certain cultural aspects that have been ignored up to now, aspects that are associated with deep changes in the Weltanschauung and systems of beliefs on human nature brought up by the late Modernism, specifically by Romanticism. The description of the main characteristics of Romanticism, starting with the “discovery of intimacy”, leads to the conclusion that the characteristic alteration of subjectivity and ipseity of the disease appears to be a vulnerability factor when somebody has to face the new challenges raise Romanticism.

The consideration of Hölderlin’s literary achievements and the deep psychological drama prevailing in them, makes explicit how the late modern human being finds in Romanticism the source of creativity and personal development but also the threat of his or her own destruction. Finally we link our hypothesis with recent genetic perspectives that consider sets of diseases associated to the same gene or genes (diseasome). In any case the process of associating the traits of Late Modernism and Romanticism with the core features of schizophrenia allows to consider the amalgamation of insanity with society, both at a general level an in what concerns individual patients, paving the way for novel therapeutic strategies.