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Gene Illusion

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Pick up virtually any text book on psychiatry or abnormal psychology, and you're sure to find confident assertions that schizophrenia has a "strong genetic component." Twin studies and adoption studies will be claimed to provide clear scientific evidence of this.

Jay Joseph has done something the authors of most such text books have not - he's actually looked at the studies themselves. His own book is detailed, comprehensive and scholarly - and when he holds these studies up to the light, most of their authors' confident conclusions virtually crumble. At the very least, Joseph shows how speculative and shakily supported these conclusions are. But I think Joseph establishes more: if the twin and adoption studies stand for anything, they show how overwhelmingly important environment and experience are in schizophrenia.

This book is not light reading. But it methodically puts biopsychiatry to the test. And, as so often in its history, biopsychiatry does not fare well when looked at too closely.