Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS)*

The Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) was developed in order to facilitate evaluation of five important symptoms frequently observed in ‘core schizophrenia’ (process schizophrenia, the schizophrenic defect state, negative schizophrenia). These symptoms include affective flattening, alogia (poverty of speech and thought), avolition, anhedonia, and attentional impairment.

The Delineation of Schizophrenia from other Psychiatric Illnesses

Evidence is provided in support of the nosological concept which distinguishes schizophrenia from borderline states. Differentiation of these disorders by a computer pattern-recognition program was based on the initial descriptive characteristics of patients. As a result, we observed good correlation between computer diagnosis from data on 215 patients and follow-up data analysed according to the criteria of Kraepelin's model of schizophrenia and its course. According to the findings on outcome, the states designated as 'sluggish schizophrenia’ (or 'slowly developing variant of schizophrenia’) comprise a group of dissimilar psychiatric disorders, including borderline states and cases of process schizophrenia, with the specific initial symptoms of the latter disease.

Identical Twins Concordant for the Progression of Affective Illness to Schizophrenia

SummaryA pair of identical twins for whom long-term follow-up information was available progressed concordantly from typical ‘affective illness' to process schizophrenia. We discuss a possible genetic basis for a certain form of schizophrenia which may present typical affective features in the initial phase of process schizophrenia.

Epileptic Psychosis—Diagnostic Comparison with Process Schizophrenia

SummaryThe mental states of 23 epileptic psychotic patients and 10 patients with process schizophrenia were compared, using the Present State Examination. The epileptics displayed marked heterogeneity of psychiatric diagnoses. Disturbances of affect underlying the psychosis or presenting as manic-depressive psychosis were frequent and independent of the type of epilepsy. Schizophrenic psychosis, classified with psychopathological criteria similar to those used in the non-epileptic schizophrenic group, was significantly associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. Psychoses other than schizophrenia, however, were present in 5 out of 16 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. These results support a relationship between schizophrenic symptoms and temporal lobe pathology and emphasize the need to use reproducible methods of diagnosis in psychiatric research.

Paranoid Psychoses

In the present paper the author will try to elucidate the stability of nosological categories as revealed by a personal follow-up investigation of 301 previously hospitalized patients with paranoid psychoses. Since the terminology used will be the Scandinavian one, a short review of the diagnostic concepts will be given. The Scandinavian concept of schizophrenia is rather narrower than that employed in the rest of Europe, and especially narrower than that prevailing in the Anglo-American literature. Many American authors include in their concept of schizophrenia what may be called “the schizophrenic reaction types”. In the present paper, the concept of schizophrenia used by Langfeldt (1937, 1939), sometimes, referred to as “process schizophrenia” or “nuclear schizophrenia” is used. “Primary symptoms” occur in clear consciousness; these include disturbances of thinking, disintegration of emotions, autism, marked feeling of influence and passivity, massive depersonalization and derealization. As a rule the illness has an insidious development and a chronic course ending up with a greater or lesser degree of mental deterioration.