Are latent thought disorders the core of negative schizophrenia?

Winfried Barnett

Christoph Mundt

pp. 240-257

in: Manfred Spitzer, Michael A. Schwartz, Michael A. Schwartz (eds), Phenomenology, language & schizophrenia, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

Since its inception as a diagnostic entity, attempts have been made to divide schizophrenia into homogeneous subgroups. Kraepelin (1899) already distinguished more florid symptoms from those that were marked by losses or deficits; the latter were responsible for the term "dementia praecox". Bleuler (1911) is well known and influential in Anglo-American psychiatry and is often viewed as a forefather of the distinction between positive and negative schizophrenia. For example, Pfohl and Andreasen (1986), Crow (1982), and Sommers (1985) see present-day negative symptoms as a reduced version of Bleuler's fundamental or basic symptoms (disturbances of association and affect, ambivalence, and autism).