Tim Crow: psychiatrist whose original thinking on the origins of schizophrenia ended up in the pages of a Sebastian Faulks novel

“Schizophrenia is perhaps the human condition,” wrote Tim Crow in 2000.1 Crow had been researching schizophrenia for most of his psychiatric career but the origins of this most complex condition had been a particular fascination. What could have given rise to a disease that has been documented throughout history, yet has no animal model and no known social or environmental cause?

Crow came up with a simple and elegant theory: the origins of schizophrenia and other psychoses lay in the moment when humans developed the capacity for language—with the light, came the dark.2 “A good theory can be written on the back of an envelope,” he said.3

Angus Mackay, honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow, was a long follower of Crow’s work. “His idea was that, as humans evolved, one cerebral hemisphere became larger than the other, and this asymmetry was associated with that particularly human of abilities, language,” says Mackay. “The model proposed that a perverse outcome of this specialisation was the risk of psychosis.”

Crow continued to develop his theory throughout his career, thinking out loud in journal pages and lecture halls. “Developing this model over the years was a major intellectual theme, but one that was not embraced by mainstream psychiatry,” says Mackay. “However, his writings were always thought …