Note 13:
Schizophrenia occurs most often in youth. Why at this age? Why not in childhood?
Consider "childhood innocence":
A freedom from ultimate concerns and final responsibility;
the world order, the perspectives adopted from others are taken for granted. And
consider youth: The time to become
your own person, the time for challenging childhood views, the time for
appropriating the I(nner You). The
child, one might say, has an I(nner You), but not yet an I that is really its own.
These considerations suggest that a critical final stage in the
ontogenetic development of the I-function may be due to occur, and may
explain the peak incidence of schizophrenia, in the years of youth.