The Divided Mind

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• Prof. Ed Bullmore
• Thursday 23 October 2025, 15:00-16:00
• Online.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Sarah Morgan.

I will talk about this recently published book: why did I write it, what was I trying to say that it would have been difficult to communicate in a peer-reviewed paper, and who was I hoping might read it? I will summarise the content and key themes of the book along the following lines, but I hope to leave a good amount of time for discussion. Briefly, the book tries to tell two occasionally interwoven histories. First, the world history of what we now call schizophrenia, especially the controversy between Freudian (brainless) and Kraepelinian (mindless) tribes, the dark crisis of the Kraepelinian concept of dementia praecox before and during World War 2, and its long-lasting imprint on how we continue to think about schizophrenia to this day. Second, my personal story as I became a psychiatrist and tried to get to grips with scientific questions about the origins of schizophrenia and the prospects for better treatments or preventions in future.  

This talk is part of the Making connections- brains and other complex systems series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Biology
• Cambridge Neuroscience Seminars
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• Life Science
• Life Sciences
• Making connections- brains and other complex systems
• Neuroscience
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• Neuroscience Seminars
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