Long-term study of schizophasic patients.

Abstract

The hypothesis that some symptoms of schizophrenia only manifest in the early stages whereas others only appear later is tested with 33 inpatients in 'terminal states'. It is found that while the onset shows no specificity, the outcome is very typical. The initial symptoms are polymorphous; thought disorders can be found in less than one third of the patients and frank incoherence approaching the severity of schizophasia not at all. Many years later appear symptoms registered as paralogism, echolalia, verbigeration, stilted speech, neologism, hypotonic thinking, retardation, derailment, and incongruous answers. Only then, sometimes 25 years after the onset of the illness, the peculiar and highly specific picture of the schizophasic disorder becomes established.