18 - Schizotypal personality: synthesis and future directions

Summary

What is schizotypy?

The purpose of this final chapter is to attempt a broad survey of current scientific inquiry into schizotypal personality and provide directions for future research. As will be seen, some of these directions represent the consensus of the contributors to this volume, whereas others reflect areas of sharp disagreement or divergence of perspectives. In the course of examining the specific contributions of the chapters in this volume to our understanding of schizotypy, it is important to bear in mind the critical conceptual issues that emerged from the proceedings of the conference. Perhaps the central question can be simply stated: What is schizotypy? This question is not as straightforward as it seems. Indeed, after 100 years of schizophrenia research, there are still lively debates on the definition of that term; research on schizotypy is in its infancy relative to its parent field, schizophrenia. Only in the last 15 years has the full force of modern clinical science been brought to bear on the nature of schizotypy, despite the fact that the origins of the concept can be traced back to Bleuler (see Ingraham, Chapter 2, this volume).

Two additional questions emerge in parallel to the first: (1) Why do we study schizotypal personality? and (2) How should we approach studying it? This chapter attempts to synthesize some answers to these questions, based on the work presented in the 17 preceding chapters. Given the early stage of the science, however, more questions will be raised than answered. Consequently, this chapter attempts to provide conceptual and methodological directions for future research that might address these questions.