Schizolinguistics, from Tuczek's Analyse einer Katatonikersprache (1921) to Wolfson's Le Schizo et les langues (1970)

Attempts to diagnose schizophrenia have been grounded in theories concerning what linguistic deviance reveals about mental function. Tuczek's patient ‘Frau M.’ was institutionalized for using a language which mixed German and French elements. The psychiatrist Goldstein cherry-picked her utterances to support his advocacy of frontal lobotomy. Louis Wolfson was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy for his intolerance of hearing or seeing English, his mother tongue. His book lays out his phonetic and translinguistic strategies for converting English utterances into other languages. The evidence provided by these cases of schizolinguistics are significant for present-day understanding of the psychology and philosophy of language. • Examines two analyses of ‘schizophrenic language’, and how data were used in work championing the use of frontal lobotomy. • Reviews recent literature questioning whether schizophrenia constitutes a medically coherent category. • Considers how Wolfson's book was interpreted by prominent commentators in the 1970s, including Deleuze and Foucault.