THE manner in which the schizophrenic patient perceives himself and his environment has been noted with awe and curiosity for centuries. A number of self-reports and clinical notes about these experiences have been recorded,1,2 but there has been little attempt to study them in any systematic manner. Recently, a number of researchers have begun to investigate the perceptual experiences of schizophrenics in greater detail. Many of these workers have used formal tests and from the resultant data have derived theoretical formulations about the perception of schizophrenics. These studies may be grouped into three broad categories.
One approach has involved extensive work on "perceptual styles" of schizophrenic patients in relation to field dependence, scanning, etc.3-5 The differences in perceptual styles of both schizophrenics and normals have been related to a number of important variables.6
The second approach has been the study of