In Search of Madness: Schizophrenia and Neuroscience, by Walter Heinrichs. (2001). New York: Oxford University Press. 368 pp., $19.95.

In Search of Madness: Schizophrenia and Neuroscience is a concise but thorough and even-handed review of the current status of research in schizophrenia. It is an amalgam of research studies distributed across numerous domains relevant to schizophrenia and represents a much expanded version of his 1993 review article in the American Psychologist. In particular, the book synthesizes aspects of neuropsychological functioning, genetic, behavioral and genetic markers, and the neurochemistry of schizophrenia with information on etiology and overt symptoms of the illness. One potentially controversial and central feature of this book is Heinrich's argument that schizophrenia is not one single illness but a heterogeneous syndrome. Heinrichs' rationale for conducting research on the studies is to exemplify the discrepancies between what researchers claim to be “common symptoms” of schizophrenia. For each topic covered, Heinrichs and colleagues combined all relevant research studies between 1980 and 1999 and performed a meta-analysis to better explain the overall status of such research. For example, regarding attention deficits on the Continuous Performance Test, he grouped all studies together between 1980 and 1999 and matched the studies according to patient sample (schizophrenia patients and controls) and measure used (the Identical Pairs version of the CPT). He then calculated the effect size to determine the variance attributed to the identified construct. This meticulous method was employed for each phenomenon that was examined.