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The British Journal of Psychiatry 134: 225-235 (1979)
© 1979 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Consciousness, information processing and schizophrenia

CD Frith

The symptoms of schizophrenia can be interpreted as the result of a defect in the mechanism that controls and limits the contents of consciousness. This defect can be understood as excessive self- awareness. Normally most of the complex information processing which is continuously required by even simple acts of perception, language and thought goes on below the level of awareness; whereas in schizophrenic patients some of this processing, or the results of this processing, not in themselves abnormal, become conscious. This excessive awareness can account for the typical symptoms of schizophrenia and explains many of the specific cognitive abnormalities found in schizophrenic patients.


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