CHIZOPHRENIA With Special Consideration of Diagnosis

This is not only of formal importance, but an essential for diagnosis, the institution of treatment, and the formulation of a correct prognosis. If schizophrenia is not distinguished from mimicking conditions, treatment rests on a purely empiricalbasis and remains precarious and uncontrolled. The recognition of the disease must be based on the forms it can take and especially on the phasein which it is. If this phase be an early one, thediagnosis is all too often missed. Kraepelin thought that 'dementia praecox' was a degenerative brain disease or a metabolic disturbance producing auto-intoxication. This line of thought is still being pursued with contra-dictory and doubtful results. (See paragraph on pathology.) According to him, it manifests itselfin loss of harmony between emotion, volition andintellect. And he states that the different forms are different expressions of a disease entity. Bleuler taught that schizophrenia was an organic process, toxic or causative of structura