[What do you associate with the word schizophrenia? A study of the social representation of schizophrenia].

This study addresses the social representation of schizophrenia. The analysis is based on a representative survey among the population of the former East German provinces now reunified with formal West Germany as the new "Länder" of the Federal Republic, as well as on a survey among medical students at the Universities of Vienna and Leipzig. For those questioned, the most striking feature of schizophrenia was that of a "split" personality. In this context they assumed the parallel existence of two (or more) personalities in the sense of a multiple personality disorder. This metaphor is interpreted as the result of a concretisation process which is substantially supported by the representation of people with mental illness in literature and the media.