Schizophrenia Flashcards
Negative symptoms
The first conceptualizations of negative symptoms of schizophrenia date back to the early 19th century, when J. Haslam described in young people a mental illness characterized by blunted sensitivity and affective indifference1. J. Hughlings Jackson2 regarded negative symptoms as reductions in aspects of higher cognitive and emotional functioning, while considering positive symptoms as “release phenomena”, episodic distortions or exaggerations in normal function. E. Kraepelin3 described negative symptoms of dementia praecox as a “weakening of those emotional activities which permanently form the mainsprings of volition, emotional dullness, failure of mental activities, loss of mastery over volition, of endeavor and of ability for independent action”, and E. Bleuler regarded affective blunting and emotional withdrawal as “fundamental” to schizophrenia, while defining hallucinations, delusions and catatonia as aspects of acute exacerbations4.
