Here is how I read a book of non-fiction these days. I begin with the index and look for “schizophrenia” then flip back to the relevant pages. (I often feel I have read the book just by becoming intimately acquainted with what’s in the index.) My “schizo positive” meter is constantly scanning for the author’s “take” on this condition. Is the author “schizo positive” or “schizo negative?” So, it was a bit surprising to pick up The Biology of Belief, a book about how thoughts are much more controlling of health outcomes than one would imagine, and discover how the author classifies schizophrenia. Bruce Lipton refers to schizophrenia as a disease.

This may simply be an oversight on his part, because the book is not at all about schizophrenia, though it could be, given all its emphasis on quantum physics and energy psychology. These topics are schizophrenia’s home turf.

The book is about epigenetics, the study of inherited changes in gene appearance that do not change the underlying DNA sequence. These changes can come from the environment, can last for the life of the cell and express themselves over generations.

This book makes a good case that the environment before conception is vitally important to the general well-being of the unborn child. Epigenetics explains why genetically related siblings in the same family are born into a unique environment. We don’t treat all our children alike because the parents circumstances change before, during and after conception. Maybe we had financial worries, didn’t plan to become pregnant, or argued constantly in the process of marital adjustment. The list of hazards can be endless. All of this sounds kind of hopeless and Darwinian, were it not for the fact that people can change their cellular biology by changing their thought patterns, which can also come about by a change of environment. Moreover, cells replace themselves completely every seven to ten years, so you are not the person you thought you were. You can renew yourself.

Epigenetics shows that there can be a positive outcome to the negative diagnosis that mainstream medicine hands you, no matter whether it is a mental health diagnosis or something else. It also dovetails very nicely with the Family Constellation Therapy that our family undertook. Family Constellation Therapy acknowledges that people with schizophrenia are particularly prone to “atonement” of a generation’s past wrongs. Through identifying the family drama, “acting” it out, and through the act of forgiveness, healing is effected at the deepest levels.