A G AliasI am a retired Indian American psychiatrist, arrived in the USA in 1971. I have over fourteen, (only but) mostly single-author publications to my credit, including a short one in The Lancet - "Androgen-Dysgenesis: A Predisposing Factor in Schizophrenia?" (1972), which is more relevant now, with the discovery of neuroactive sex-steroids in the brain than in the 1970s when some complex combination of hyper as well as hypoactivity in the dopamine system in critical brain sites was seen as the determinant of schizophrenic psychopathology.I sensed schizophrenia more as a quantitative variation from a "mean normal" psyche rather than as a qualitative variation. Behavioral scientists by and large, however, view schizophrenia more as a qualitative variation with hallucinations and delusions, so do the educated lay public. Genetic studies of the recent past, however, seem to cast doubts on a too narrower view of schizophrenic psychopathology, to confine the search in the dopamine system. Besides, neuroactive steroids influence the "dopamine system," as well as other neurotransmitters in a variety of ways. I have been suffering from an enduring depression, which was mixed with an underlying hypomania, so to speak, almost all my life, which I suspected could also be a case of dormant schizophrenia. But this dormant schizophrenia helped me, I believe to develop a better insight into the psychopathology of schizophrenia. I had a fairly typical migraine with aura, in the form of scotoma, since age 15. (Since 1965, I have been taking smaller doses of amitriptyline, works as a prophylactic to migraine, and other antidepressants [higher doses induced anxiety, becoming tongue-tied while speaking], as well as a tiny dose of a long-acting benzodiazepine, like Valium, just 1 mg daily lately; both of which have been substantially beneficial, though medication has its limitations - Until 1971, I took 15 mg of phenobarbital, when I needed to speak to an audience, which eased my stage fright. A prominent Ayurvedic physician in Kerala treated me in 1952, for my migraine with a medicated oil to be applied on the scalp, along with some other Ayurvedic medicines including a purgative. He strongly advised me against engaging in both mental and physical heavy work. I took it to heart, "forcing" myself to be lazy, without sensing that I was already habitually lazy, and becoming still lazier ever since. But my migraine disappeared except once when I was 'burning midnight oil' while preparing for a midterm college examination/test. Some readers may be interested in this elaboration: Before I ever experienced my migraine "attacks," if I took a nap during the daytime, I sensed unusual nausea after I woke up. I then automatically [without any training] and forcefully would exhale through my nose, which was audible to others. Read More Read Less