This is the twelfth book in the Oxford University Press series on International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry – a series under the guiding editorship of Bill Fulford. Books in the series are selling like hot cakes and the series' success seems to be a manifestation of a booming appetite within mental health and academic philosophy to think again about madness.

This book tackles what the great anti-psychiatrist Thomas Szasz termed the ‘sacred cow’ of psychiatry – schizophrenia. It assembles 16 extraordinarily diverse philosophical essays. Many of the authors have contributed over the years to Bill Fulford and John Sadler's journal Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology.

In some respects the title is misleading because rather than schizophrenia being ‘reconceived’ the book conceives schizophrenia in a multitude of ways. Plurality rather than unity is the theme of this book. If there is any unity amongst these essays it is in the agreement that schizophrenia is not a brain disease.

In a way I found it odd that a philosophical book orients itself against a neuropsychiatric view of schizophrenia because it does not seem to me that this view is excluded for philosophical reasons. The strong neuropsychiatric notion that schizophrenia stands in relation to the brain as Huntington's disease or General Paresis of the Insane stands in relation to the brain seems to be unconvincing for empirical reasons rather than philosophical reasons. It could be the case. It just happens to be that nobody has empirically demonstrated that it is the case.

One may also take the view that schizophrenia is qualitatively different from other brain diseases but that it nevertheless is a brain disease – a uniquely human one. The highly philosophical psychiatrist Kurt Schneider took this view and he took it in full knowledge that it had not been empirically demonstrated.

Perhaps we have simply become tired of the brain disease perspective and now feel more open to alternatives. If so this book offers some interesting perspectives and certainly some ones against which to sharpen one's own thinking on how best to conceptualize schizophrenia or what to put in its place.

With the book's orientation away from the brain belief it is interesting to see which of the contributors believe in the concept of schizophrenia at all. The cognitive psychologists are most unbelieving and the book contains essays from some savaging the Neo-Kraeplinian concept with enthusiastic calls to replace the notion with cognitive concepts that we are told are on the horizon. Most believing are the phenomenologists. Here are essays where the schizophrenia concept is alive, well and considered quite intelligible – albeit through the eyes of German and ancient Greek philosophy. The phenomenologists believe in schizophrenia without any prior commitment to what might or might not be found in the brain or in the psychology laboratory or in population studies – their view is that schizophrenia is intelligible as a concept prior to these investigations and that it makes these investigations meaningful.

Like many Maudsley-trained psychiatrists my bias is towards the phenomenological tradition and away from traditions that conceptualize schizophrenia solely within the concepts of a given science, e.g. neuroscience, cognitive psychology or sociology. Yet I found interesting things to be critical of amongst the phenomenological essays and interesting points to take on board amongst the others. In particular, I thought phenomenologists need to be careful about straying into empirical claims without reference to evidence or without the scepticism inherent to the empirical viewpoint. Contrariwise, I thought cognitive psychologists, despite their theoretical overconfidence, are impressive at pointing out inconsistencies and sloppy thinking in the medical worldview and countering the therapeutic nihilism that psychiatrists can be prone to. In addition one essay from a very angry Black cultural theorist detained at the Maudsley Hospital in his youth and at one stage diagnosed with schizophrenia certainly got me thinking.

Schizophrenia research and care like philosophy struggles with concepts. It also aims to gain clarity where there is genuine confusion and darkness. Like philosophy it concerns problems which many avoid but are not possible to avoid. It therefore seems right and natural that philosophy and schizophrenia make contact and the editors and contributors of Reconceiving Schizophrenia are to be congratulated in exploring points of contact and capitalizing on a renaissance of interest in them. It is just a shame that they left out the brain …