Eugen Bleuler Research Articles

Hidden histories of science and medicine: spirit mediumship and the ‘psychology without a soul’

Mental health professionals working with the dying and bereaved may occasionally feel that a belief in the mind’s persistence after death can function as an important coping device for some of their patients. To facilitate an unbiased reading of the empirical articles in this thematic issue, this essay therefore uses the history of a particularly contested area of ‘survival research’, spirit mediumship, to highlight widely forgotten but pivotal historical contexts and complexities which have failed to inform and balance standard academic receptions of empirical approaches to the mind’s hypothetic survival of death. After sketching diametrically opposed attitudes to mediumship by the founders of modern psychology, William James and Wilhelm Wundt, and psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler’s defences of research with mediums against the dismissive stance exemplified by Emil Kraepelin and Henry Maudsley, I conclude that standard interpretations of any open-minded scientific interest in mediumship and survival research as wishful thinking are asymmetrical and psychologically simplistic.

The Dopamine Hypothesis as a Causal Explanation of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia, a severe psychiatric disorder, profoundly impacts individuals, families, and society, characterized by symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking, speech, and motor behavior, as outlined in the DSM-5 criteria. Coined by Eugen Bleuler in 1911 to emphasize fragmented cognition, the term "schizophrenia" replaced Emile Kraepelin's "dementia praecox"(1908) reflecting its chronic nature, with an estimated prevalence of 1% in the general population and a significant heritability rate of around 79%. The dopamine hypothesis, central to schizophrenia research, suggests heightened dopaminergic transmission as a primary factor in its development, supported by the efficacy of antipsychotic drugs targeting dopamine receptors. However, recent studies have revealed complexities beyond dopamine dysfunction, including the glutamate hypothesis, which proposes deficits in glutamate activity as an alternative explanation. This essay critically evaluates the dopamine hypothesis within the broader biopsychosocial framework, emphasizing the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors in schizophrenia etiology. Despite its foundational role, the dopamine hypothesis has limitations in fully clarifying the multifaceted nature of schizophrenia, highlighting the need for comprehensive approaches integrating diverse perspectives and methodologies to enhance understanding of this complex disorder. Keywords: Dopamine Hypothesis, Schizophrenia, Mental Illness, Psychotic Symptoms, GENE x ENVIROMENT Interaction

The relation between autism and psychosis: overlapping and differing features

IntroductionAutism spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) have a strong historic connection. At the beginning of the 20th century when referring to schizophrenic patients Eugen Bleuler used the term autism to describe the apparent withdrawal from the outside world. Other authors also emphasized the association between this two entities. In fact, only in DSM-III were these disorders placed in different diagnostic categories. Today, even though this nosological vision still prevails, a growing number of studies have shown significant overlaps between the two disorders. Patients with the diagnosis of ASD often experience psychotic symptoms and similarly schizophrenic patients have a high prevalence of autistic traits.ObjectivesTo clarify the distinction between ASD and psychotic disorders, namely to help the clinical and phenomenological distinction between patients with a primary psychotic disorder versus patients with the diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder that might also experience psychotic symptoms.MethodsResearch on UpToDate using the terms “Autism Spectrum Disorders”; “Schizophrenia” and “psychosis”.ResultsDelusional beliefs and paranoid ideation are common findings in autistic individuals in the same way that they constitute one of the main features of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. However, in ASD individuals one must be vigilant of its distinction with “childish fantasies”. Both disorders (ASD and SCZ spectrum disorders) share Theory of Mind (ToM) impairments that contribute to the development of paranoia.Sensory anomalies are common in ASD and might be confused with hallucinations. However, anomalous perceptual experiences can and do often happen in ASD and are clinically overlapping with hallucinatory phenomena. In the case of a neurodevelopment disorder, however, they could probably be better understood as a part of it more than the signal of a co-ocurring psychotic disorder. Attenuated psychotic symptoms pose an even more complex subject because of the overlap between autistic symptoms and subclinical psychotic symptoms. Another area that poses diagnostic difficulties has to do with the distinction between negative symptoms seen in schizophrenia and autistic symptoms. Lack of emotional reciprocity in ASD can be confused with “blunted” affect in schizophrenia.Other overlapping features between these two entities can be identified.ConclusionsThe diagnostic boundaries between ASD and SCZ are not always clear. Their overlapping characteristics and potential co-occurrence might pose important diagnostic challenges in clinical practice. The clinical course of both diseases frequently represents a key element for the differential diagnosis between autism and psychosis. The profound knowledge of these two entities is of extreme importance contributing to the implementation of more targeted and effective management strategies.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Psychopathological consideration of the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia

Background: Considering the conterarguement of the optimistic attitude of psychoanalysis and environmental change, the current diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia (i.e., Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition-text revised [DSM-5-TR], International Classification of Diseases, 11th revision [ICD-11]) are defined under the substantial influences of symptom-based operationalism. The current diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia are occasionally considered as the incorporated characteristic mixtures of the chronicity, positive symptoms, and negative symptoms of Emil Kraepelin, Kurt Schneider, and Eugen Bleuler, respectively.Current Concepts: Concerning the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, the two remarkable changes from DSM-IV or DSM-IV-TR to DSM-5 or DSM-5-TR are as follows. First, related to diagnosing schizophrenia, the weighting of Kurt Schneider’s first-rank symptoms has been omitted. Second, the defining subtypes (i.e., paranoid, disorganized, undifferentiated, catatonic, and residual) have also been omitted. In addition, catatonia has been newly considered a semi-independent diagnostic entity in DSM-5 or DSM-5-TR. Therefore, from a psychopathological aspect, the operationally defined diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia display several limitations: First, the oblivion of the concept of formal thought disorder, considered as the fundamental symptom of schizophrenia by the greatest psychopathologists, has been deepened. Second, the current diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia have been partly inconsistent with the disease essentialism model.Discussion and Conclusion: Schizophrenia cases are interconnected with ‘family resemblance’ but not shared by common underlying neurobiological correlates. Herein, in clinical psychiatric practice, with an emphatic approach, phenomenological psychopathology would still be required to evaluate the subjective experiences of an individual with schizophrenia.

Circulation of ideas about schizophrenia within the psychiatric context of Rio de Janeiro in the 1910s and 1920s.

The article examines the circulation of the schizophrenia category in debates and psychiatric spaces in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the twentieth century. It analyzes this category in the scientific exchange between Eugen Bleuler and Ernst Kretschmer - observing correspondences between psychodynamic and constitutionalist theories in the European context - and then pursues its use in the Observation Pavilion of the Hospício Nacional de Alienados, in articles and scientific meetings. We investigated how its circulation was simultaneous in scientific and assistance spaces. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that, as occurred in the European context, Brazilian psychiatrists actively participated in the transnational circulation of the schizophrenia category through its appropriation and expanded use of the semantic field "schizo" according to local interests.

The stalwart - Carl gustav jung

ABSTRACT Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who pioneered in analytical psychology. His fundamental work on the unconscious human mind, association tests, archetypes, anima and animus, the self, the persona, introverted, extroverted, synchronicity, psyche, complexes, and individuation has an influential impact on psychology, for which he became the father of analytical psychology also known as Jungian psychology. His works in literature, art, philosophy, religion, and spirituality are inspirational. In World War I, he worked under Eugen Bleuler as a psychiatrist at Zurich University. He was a close associate of Sigmund Freud but it did not last long. “Psychology of the Unconscious” is one of his exceptional works.

Double bookkeeping in schizophrenia spectrum disorder: an empirical-phenomenological study

Double bookkeeping is a term introduced by Eugen Bleuler to describe a fundamental feature of schizophrenia where psychotic reality can exist side by side with shared reality even when these realities seem mutually exclusive. Despite increasing theoretical interest in this phenomenon over the recent years, there are no empirical studies addressing this issue. We have, therefore, conducted a phenomenologically descriptive qualitative study of 25 patients with schizophrenia in which we addressed the following issues: (1) Experience of double reality; (2) Emergence and development of two realities; (3) Truth quality of psychotic or private reality; (4) Insight into illness; (5) Communication of psychotic experiences. The most important result was that most patients felt to be in contact with another dimension of reality. Hallucinatory and delusional experience pertained to this different reality, which patients most frequently kept separated from the shared reality. This other dimension was considered by the patients as being more profound and real. The pre-psychotic and psychotic experiences were difficult to verbalize and typically described as totally different than ordinary experience. Double reality was persistent across remissions. None of the patients considered their condition as an illness analogous to a somatic disorder. Most patients described a vague sense of duality preceding the crystallization of double bookkeeping. This emergence of doubleness was associated with a fundamental alienation from oneself, the world, and others stretching back to childhood or early adolescence. We discuss the results with a special emphasis on the concept of psychosis, clinical interview, treatment, and pathogenetic research.

Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer

Reviewed by: Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna by Edith Sheffer Katherine Arens Edith Sheffer, Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna. New York: W.W. Norton, 2018. 320 pp. Edith Sheffer, a historian of Germany and Central Europe at UC Berkeley, has provided an important book: Asperger's Children, a case study in the ideologization of institutions and institutional discourses. Its focus is physician Hans Asperger (1906–1980), who evolved the standard diagnosis of autism, and how a public welfare debate in Vienna fell under the influence of Nazi ideologies through a combination of opportunism and willful malfeasance. Eugen Bleuler had introduced the term autism in 1911, but child psychiatrist Leo Kanner, a 1940s Austrian refugee working in the United States, specified in 1943 its most compelling cause: poor parenting, especially "refrigerator mothers." His essay cited Asperger's 1944 postdoctoral thesis, "The 'Autistic Psychopaths' in Childhood," which had drawn on Asperger's work at the Am Spiegelgrund pediatric psychiatric clinic in Vienna (a part of the Steinhof complex). There, German and Austrian social politics intertwined with the Nazi T4 euthanasia programs from 1940 until war's end. Sheffer, however, is less focused on Asperger's possible individual guilt than on how Vienna's extended medical and social welfare establishment assimilated to Nazi psychiatric standards under the Nuremberg Laws, when [End Page 90] "two-thirds of all Vienna's 4,900 doctors and 70 percent of its 110 pediatricians lost their positions" (74), and many more emigrated, leaving a vacuum soon filled by Nazi ideologues. The Steinhof Psychiatric Institute had opened in 1907 as a progressive institution (it still exists on the Baumgartnerhöhe, topped by Otto Wagner's church). Yet under pro-Nazi leadership after 1940 and the start of the T4 programs, Steinhof was implicated in at least 7,500 deaths, starting in that year with the deportation of over 3,000 patients to the gas chamber (probably Hartheim). That made room for the "Vienna Municipal Youth Welfare Institution" at Spiegelgrund. The 640 beds of Steinhof's youth ward retained a pediatric euthanasia unit even after T4 was abolished in 1941, ultimately responsible for almost 800 deaths. Red Vienna's 1920s positive response to the lingering effects of World War I and the depression had turned deadly. Between 1923 and 1934, Vienna had innovated in social welfare, including building 380 apartment buildings housing 220,000 persons (a tenth of the city's population). Some measures were educational: Erwin Lazar's "Curative Education Clinic" (founded in 1911) had introduced innovations in the state school structure for social workers, teachers, and doctors; from 1918 to 1925, he consulted for the new Ministry of Public Health. Yet "social welfare" became in the 1940s a way to manage populations in increasingly normative ways. "Problem children" and school surveillance became boom industries, part of what Sheffer calls a "diagnosis regime" that "sort[ed] the population into categories, cataloguing people by race, politics, religion, sexuality, criminality, heredity, and biological defects" (15) that converged with Nazi eugenics. Asperger, who had been a member of the Nazi youth movement, helped Red Vienna's "curative education" turn into "positive eugenics"—triaging individuals for desirable traits (25–27) while also facilitating eventual turns toward the negative eugenics of extermination. Lazar had distinguished physiological causes from social causes for a lack of "community competence" (Gemeinschaftsfähigkeit), but, as "community competence" turned into an ideology of "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft, 16) in Steinhof, poverty and child neglect came to be defined as a threat to the community. "By 1936, an average of twenty-one children a day were removed from families into Vienna's Child Foster Care Service" (33), and from there to Spiegelgrund and its regimented "therapeutic" regimen, and not infrequently to medical "research" (including twin research). [End Page 91] By spring 1944, the city's Public Health Office had compiled a medical index that included 767,000 people (a quarter of the city's population). A staff of seventy went through "birth records, Youth Office records, medical records, police records, Steinhof records, Nazi Party records, and city registries of prostitutes and alcoholics" and identified 12,000 disabled children and 40,000 "difficult...

The first generation and second generation antipsychotic drugs and their pharmacology in treatment of schizophrenia

In this review report, an attempt made to present an overview of schizophrenia & those drugs which are used in treatment of psychiatric disorders as well as some treatments for psychosis. In 1908, the schizophrenia word was coined by Eugen Bleuler (Swiss psychiatrist). The use antipsychotics as medication began from 1933 in France. Laborit and Huguenard administrated the aliphatic Phenothiazine, Chlorpromazine during surgery due to its potential anesthetic effect, in 1951. Thereafter, Hamon and Delay extended the use of this treatment in psychiatric patients. Due to abnormal brain structure & functioning occurs schizophrenia as well as psychotic disorders. Schizophrenia a condition in people unable to differentiate between real & imaginary world. In this article we all know about Schizophrenia & Antipsychotics drugs. In that include symptoms & their types, cause, risk factor, antipsychotics classification & their pharmacology etc. In that there are three types of symptoms namely positive, Negative, Cognitive. Exact causes of schizophrenia are unknown. In the treatment of Schizophrenia or psychotics disorders the physicians commonly used antipsychotic medicines or drugs to treat their symptoms. Antipsychotic drugs further divided into two major classes namely Typical & Atypical antipsychotics. Chlorpromazine is the first medicine or drug which is used to treat symptoms of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders. Clozapine is most effective or potent antipsychotics drug. Which is belongs to the atypical antipsychotics which are reducing the risk of schizoaffective patients. Physicians recommend a combination of antipsychotics along with psychotherapy. In this article we have covered Brahmyadiyoga is an Ayurvedic remedies.

Research based treatment through neuroleptics (antipsychotics) in Pakistan: Can it be trusted?

Madam, Schizophrenia is a mental illness where patients observe and interpret reality in an alternate fashion or perspective. The word is derived from Greek 'schizo' (splitting) and 'phren' (mind), with the term initially proposed by Eugen Bleuler (1908)1. The debilitating illness usually has symptoms of hallucinations, delusions, and overall distorted versions of reality. Patients may also exhibit social withdrawal, disordered speech, disorderly movement and behavioral change. Schizophrenia affects less than one per cent of the global population, and not all Pakistani clinics are equipped to manage patients mentioned above. Schizophrenia is a psychiatric illness commonly treated with antipsychotics to alessen the patients symptoms. More often than not, second generation antipsychotics (clozapine, asenapine, risperidone etc.) are used to provide a better result and adequately decrease the systematic side effects of these neuroleptics. However, what is a moment of caution for clinicians globally as well as in Pakistan, is that these second-generation antipsychotics may be causing problems bigger than just side effects like weight gain, diabetes, or hypertension. Research conducted by Mitchell et al. confirmed the high probability of second-generation antipsychotics causing metabolic syndrome in patients2 by presenting with abnormal findings that put them at cardiovascular risk. These findings include visceral adiposity, insulin tolerance, elevated triglyceride levels, and decreased high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels. These drugs are not only affecting first- world countries but are bringing about more significant influence in third- world countries. Pakistan lacks available treatments for schizophrenia, at around 96%, which is comparable to an approximately median of 32.2% globally and 69% in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs)3. From 2010 to 2015, there was a progressive rise in the use of antipsychotics in Pakistan, most commonly risperidone and olanzapine4. The onus ultimately falls on inadequate evidence and treatment protocol in first and third- world countries. However, a feasible suggestion could be knowing the minimum effective dosage of second-generation antipsychotics. Research conducted by Leucht et al. mentioned the exact dosages, to minimize lethal side effects of these drugs (aripiprazole 10 mg/1.33, clozapine 300 mg/40, risperidone 2 mg/0.27)5. To date, these drugs are still being prescribed in most countries without proper control on dosages. It is imperative for healthcare workers in Pakistan to implement an accurate administration plan for dosages considering the favourable outcomes in patients with schizophrenia.

Case report on schizophrenia: Application of paplaus model theory in nursing care plan

The term schizophrenia was coined by Eugen Bleuler, it has been derived from the Greek word “schizo” meaning split, and “phren” meaning mind. The point prevalence of schizophrenia is about 1% with equal prevalence in both sexes. The onset of schizophrenia is bimodal in women and often runs a more benign course as compared to men and usually occurs in the late teens or early 20Most devastating disease as this disease strikes the people at the stage when they can show the growth and highest productivity in their lives, mostly in teens or early 20’s, it affects people such a way unable them to return to normal lives: go to job, school to marry, etc.Understanding the severity of this disorder is very important because these clients are always Potential for violence self-directed or at others related to extreme suspiciousness so to Identify the level of suicide precautions needed. If there is a high-risk, does a hospitalization requires? Or if there is a low risk, will the client be safe to go home with supervision from a family member or a friend? For example, does client: Admit previous suicide attempts.,Abuse any substances..Have no peers/friends.,Have any suicide plan.,Contact the family, arrange for crisis counseling. Activate links to self-help groups.,Check for the availability of required supply of medications needed,Initially, provide activities that require minimal concentration (e.g., drawing, playing simple board games),Involve the client in gross motor activities that call for very little concentration (e.g., walking,When the client is at the most depressed state, Involve the client in one-to-one activity.

Special Report: Be Prepared to Address Technological Addictions in Psychiatric Practice

Special Report: Be Prepared to Address Technological Addictions in Psychiatric Practice

On the origins of the concept of 'latent schizophrenia' in Russian psychiatry.

In the mid-twentieth century in the Soviet Union, latent schizophrenia became an important concept and a matter of research and also of punitive psychiatry. This article investigates precursor concepts in early Russian psychiatry of the nineteenth century, and examines whether - as claimed in recent literature - Russian and Soviet research on latent schizophrenia was mainly influenced by the work of Eugen Bleuler.

Bleuler revisited: on persecutory delusions and their resistance to therapy

Bleuler revisited: on persecutory delusions and their resistance to therapy

Book Review: "Titans of psychiatry of the twentieth century" by P.V. Morozov, R.A. Bekker, Yu.V. Bykov

This publication is an analysis of the book by P.V. Morozov, R.A. Becker, Yu.V. Bykov, dedicated to the four most significant persons, who had an invaluable influence on psychiatry in the XX century (Emil Kraepelin, Eugen Bleuler, Sigmund Freud, Karl Jaspers). Among the advantages of the book on the history of psychiatry, one can stress out a successful extrapolation of the ideas of the “titans” to the current state of psychiatric science and a discussion of their work with the use of the actual language of current clinical psychiatry. This makes it possible to recommend the book not only to experienced psychiatrists and researchers, but also to young specialists, as well as residents and students. Another important achievement of the book is the successful disclosure of not only ideas, but also biographies of the “titans” placed in the scientific, historical, political, cultural and personal contexts.

Being psychotic is not necessarily being ill: Psychotic continuum and the relevance of lacanian psychoanalytic approach

IntroductionThe notion of subclinical psychosis is as old as Eugen Bleuler’s work on schizophrenia. It is also consistent with psychodynamic theories (see PDM-2) on the organization of personality on different levels including, among others, a psychotic level of personality organization. Research on the continuum of psychosis has offered substantial support to the view that psychotic phenotypes are significantly more prevalent than clinical psychosis.ObjectivesThis may imply that being “psychotic” is not necessarily being ill. This assumption raises important theoretical and clinical questions: what causes psychosis to manifest itself clinically and, conversely, what possibly prevents it from doing so?MethodsAt the same time, it potentially frees psychiatry from certain diagnostic and therapeutic impasses. It allows for a shift of emphasis from misguiding classifications and often frustrating “evidence-based” therapeutic attempts to a more personalized approach.ResultsDiagnosis may thus rely on psychoanalytical “markers” or “indicators” regarding the subject (e.g. deficits in the symbolic register, dysregulated rapport with one’s body, problematic inscription in social relations etc.) at least as much as on symptomic phenomenology. Therapy may also take advantage of and deploy the unique coping strategies employed by the psychotic individual.ConclusionsThe diagnostic and therapeutic insights offered by Lacanian psychoanalysis create the possibility of a fruitful theoretical, diagnostic and therapeutic approach for clinical and subclinical psychotic conditions; indicate that psychoanalysis is indispensable for clinical psychiatry; and signal the possibility of a time-honored alternative to the in-vogue neurocognitive paradigm of “personalized” psychiatry.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Diagnosis and Therapy of An Autistic Child

The term autism refers to the Greek word autos (alone). was first used in 1911 by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler...

Double bookkeeping and schizophrenia spectrum: divided unified phenomenal consciousness

Eugen Bleuler, the founder of the concept of schizophrenia, pointed out that psychotic patients were able to live in two disjoint worlds (namely, the social, intersubjective world and the delusional world). He termed this phenomenon “double bookkeeping,” but did not provide any conceptual elaboration of this phenomenon or its possible mechanisms. Double bookkeeping has been neglected in mainstream psychiatry, but it has been addressed in recent theoretical work, however mainly concerned with the issue of delusion. In this article, we present clinical material that supports the view that double bookkeeping manifests itself across various psychotic phenomena and its antecedent may be observed in premorbid (pre-onset) phases as well as in the schizotypal disorder. We try to conceptualize double bookkeeping to concretize an often atmospheric perception of paradoxicality in the encounter with the patient. A phenomenological analysis of double bookkeeping suggests an instability in the affective (“auto-affection”) articulation of selfhood. We point to four main implications of our presentation: (1) diagnostic, (2) epistemological, (3) therapeutic and (4) pathogenetic research.

T93. RESHAPING THE DIAGNOSTIC BORDERS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA: THE LOOK OF HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICES

BackgroundThe diagnostic concept of Schizophrenia as defined by DSM and ICD is increasingly being questioned. It is criticized above all for its lack of validity. It refers to very heterogeneous disorders in terms of signs and symptoms but also in terms of evolution and heritability. Clinicians and researchers are therefore considering how to rethink this concept, in the absence of known physiopathological mechanisms and etiology, by integrating various advances in fields such as genetics, molecular biology, brain imaging and cognitive sciences. However, the renewal of the concept of schizophrenia has yet to be explored in terms of its potential impact on psychiatric practice. It is an essential point because this diagnostic concept does not correspond to a theoretical entity that exists for itself but it is a tool of psychiatrists’ daily practice when they seek to name the disorders presented by a patient. Thus, a renewal of the concept of schizophrenia would necessarily have an impact on the diagnoses made by psychiatrists and we know how important the diagnosis in psychiatry is: for the medical care but also for the personal history of the patient. This impact that a renewal of the concept of schizophrenia could have on the diagnostic practices of psychiatrists can be better understood through the analysis of a historical example: the introduction of the concept of Schizophrenia at the Psychiatric Clinic of Strasbourg in France during the period 1920–1930. The concept of Schizophrenia was first discussed in 1908 by the swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler at the Annual Meeting of the German Psychiatric Association in Berlin. At the Psychiatric Clinic of Strasbourg, it was first used by psychiatrists in 1922. How did this then new concept find its place among the other diagnostic concepts that had been used until then in this institution?MethodsIn an attempt to answer this question, we implemented a methodology that combined a quantitative and a qualitative approach. The first is a retrospective descriptive statistical study whose objective is to establish the evolution of the proportion of the different diagnoses made at the Psychiatric Clinic of Strasbourg during the period 1920–1930. This study includes all hospitalized patients and uses admission records for data collection. This quantitative approach was complemented by a qualitative approach that consists in reconstructing the diagnostic trajectory of some patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia after the period of introduction of this concept. The diagnoses made during their previous hospitalizations were systematically collected and analyzed, this time using the medical records of these patients as sources.ResultsThe diagnostic concept of Schizophrenia seems to have replaced the one of Dementia praecox within the diagnostic practices: the latter was given extensively in 1924, but hardly any longer in 1928. However, in the same period of time, other diagnostic concepts of the field of psychosis like Manic-depressive Illness were less commonly used while others like Catatonia were increasingly employed. The reconstruction of patients’ diagnostic trajectories tends to show that the diagnostic of schizophrenia would have taken over from the diagnostic of Dementia Praecox but also from some of the diagnoses of Manic-depressive Illness, Hebephrenia and Psychopathy.DiscussionThis historical perspective makes it possible to understand the impact on psychiatrist’s diagnostic practices of a “nosological innovation” that is theoretical, such as the renewal of the concept of schizophrenia could be. In the diagnostic practices, one diagnostic concept would not simply replace another, but it’s introduction could induce a broader reshaping of diagnostic mapping.

Self-Reported Autistic Traits Using the AQ: A Comparison between Individuals with ASD, Psychosis, and Non-Clinical Controls.

The term “autism” was originally coined by Eugen Bleuler to describe one of the core symptoms of schizophrenia. Even if autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD) are now considered two distinct conditions, they share some clinical features. The present study aimed to investigate self-reported autistic traits in individuals with ASD, SSD, and non-clinical controls (NCC), using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), a 50-item questionnaire. The study was conducted in the Psychiatry Unit of Policlinico “G. Rodolico”, Catania, Italy. The AQ was administered to 35 adults with ASD, 64 with SSD, and 198 NCC. Overall, our data showed that the ASD sample scored significantly higher than NCC. However, no significant differences were detected between individuals with ASD and SSD. Notably, the three groups scored similarly in the subscale “attention to detail”. AQ showed good accuracy in differentiating ASD from NCC (AUC = 0.84), while discriminant ability was poor in the clinical sample (AUC = 0.63). Finally, AQ did not correlate with clinician-rated ADOS-2 scores in the ASD sample. Our study confirms that symptoms are partially overlapping in adults with ASD and psychosis. Moreover, they raise concerns regarding the usefulness of AQ as a screening tool in clinical populations.