ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explore the background to the current concepts of mental illness and criminality in order to trace the origins of assumptions about the association between them, especially the current popular tendency to see connections between (what is understood as) schizophrenia and perceptions of some people as ‘dangerous’. The chapter will outline the history of Western psychiatry which, in the nineteenth century, developed the concept of schizophrenia and also incorporated the idea of the ‘dangerous man’—both emerging in the context of various forces in European thinking. It will then discuss the extent to which images of race-and indeed racist imagesinfluenced ideas about schizophrenia and the concept of ‘dangerousness’ itself.
