A COOPERATIVE RESEARCH IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract

Despite the fact that schizophrenia has been known under one or another name for centuries, the nature of the disorder even at the descriptive level remains in no small measure yet to be determined. It is true that there is a voluminous literature describing the multifarious deviations from psychologic normality and no small number of publications dealing with organic variations. But the question is still open as to which of the deviations are essentially characteristic of the psychosis. In the picture as presented by the patient we have to deal with pathologic phenomena of several different categories. The abnormalities may comprise the effects of bad hygiene, the effects of habituation, the effects arising primarily out of the fundamental cause or causes of the disorder and the defects arising from secondary operations of the primary causal factors. The need remains for an adequate definition of the psychosis. This definition should, of