Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
Summary
From his first research study (“The schematizing process: Perceptual attitudes and personality qualities in sensitivity to change”) to his latest (“The functional neuroanatomy of antisaccade eye movements investigated with positron emission tomography”), Philip Holzman has explored experimental psychopathology with a depth and breadth unequalled in our time. His studies of smooth pursuit eye movement dysfunction, and its connections with thought disorder and genetics, are known to every student of the field. The evolution of his work parallels the evolution of the science of mental disorder – reaching ever more deeply downward into biological mechanisms – but it retains an upward glance, at the phenomena of psychopathology, that the field sometimes forgets in its reductionistic zeal. To be fully informative about schizophrenia, Dr. Holzman has written, “phenomena should be explored which point, Janus-like, in two directions at once: they should be tied to the psychology of schizophrenia, and at the same time related to known processes in the brain.” For abundant scholarly reasons, and other reasons that words cannot express, we celebrate our colleague Philip Holzman at mid-career, as he leaves lectern and mortarboard behind to pursue his research full-time.
We also celebrate the sixtieth year of the Schizophrenia Research Program of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, whose Benevolent Foundation supported the preparation of this book, as it has supported more than 500 research projects in its distinguished history.
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- Information
- PsychopathologyThe Evolving Science of Mental Disorder, pp. xiii - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996