Book Review: Wittgenstein for Beginners / The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber and the Schizophrenic Mind

★ Wittgenstein for Beginners. Heaton, J. & Groves, J. (1994) Cambridge: Icon Books.

★ The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber and the Schizophrenic Mind. Sass, L.A. (1994) London: Cornell University Press.

These two books can be conveniently reviewed together. The first is a basic introduction to Wittgenstein, the text of which was written by a psychotherapist. The second is an application of aspects of Wittgenstein's thought to the understanding of psychopathology.

Wittgenstein is considered by many to be the great philosopher of the twentieth century, so psychotherapists who are committed to a philosophical perspective on their clinical and theoretical work - as are many readers of this Journal - should get to grips with him. Wittgenstein conceived of his philosophy as a form of therapy, and saw much traditional philosophy as an intellectual or, more exactly, linguistic disease that this therapy sets out to cure. He also made some sharp criticisms of Freud which, if somewhat dated now, informed a generation of philosophical commentators on Freud and strongly influenced the 'hermeneutic tradition in psychoanalysis as represented by writers like Rycroft and Schafer. Indeed, some of the more recent philosophical reconstructions of psychoanalysis such as the work of Davidson, Gardner and Cavell are deeply rooted in the Wittgensteinian tradition.

I cannot imagine a better introduction to Wittgenstein than Wittgenstein for Beginners. Heaton clearly knows his subject inside-out and anyone familiar with Wittgenstein's work and the massive secondary literature commenting on it will recognize the background of scholarship to this deceptively simple book. The book is presented in a comic-strip format, and Judy Groves illustrations certainly add a great deal of verve to a work which might otherwise inevitably be somewhat dry. intellectual biography, following the work of the Viennese genius in the context of his life.

I don't think that many readers new to the subject will walk away from the book with a secure sense of Wittgenstein was 'on about'. Indeed, I imagine that many will interpret the book psychologically rather than philosophically, which misses the point. This probably can't be helped. Wittgenstein is a demanding thinker. His philosophy is, to use a bit of his own jargon, a 'form of life'. Once the penny drops, you see the world differently. But (at least in my case) a lot of effort was required before the penny began to budge.

Sass' book is one of the few really brilliant contributions to the literature on psychopathology that I have encountered in some time. He uses Wittgenstein's study of the philosophical attitude of solipsism to understand schizophrenic states. He is at pains to contradict Jaspers' claim that schizophrenic phenomena are 'incomprehensible, and takes great pains to demonstrate how we can understand such states of mind. Sass uses the well known case of Judge Schreber, who wrote an autobiographical account of his madness which was famously analyzed by Freud in 1911 as a sort of exemplar for his thesis. Unlike much of the recent flood of Schreber scholarship, Sass does not concern himself with the origins of Schreber's madness (although he regards the causes of schizophrenia as an important issue for research). I was particularly struck by Sass' demonstration of how writers on schizophrenia routinely misportray the phenomenology of psychotic symptoms. Of all of the standard accounts of schizophrenia, the essence of Sass' neo-Wittgensteinian view is probably closest to that of Freud (although inflected in a very different idiom), and I was a bit frustrated that Sass didn't give this more attention. In short: A stunning book. Miss it at your peril!

David Smith