Fluent Essays

I need help understanding schizophrenia as a psychological disorder. I especially want to understand its subtypes, symptoms, etiological factors and maintenance in detail with examples. Schizophrenia (DSM-IV-TR #295.1–295.3, 295.90) Schizophrenia is a chronic, more or less debilitating illness characterized by perturbations in cognition, affect and behavior, all of which have a bizarre aspect. Delusions, also generally bizarre, and hallucinations, generally auditory in type, also typically occur. The original name for this illness, “dementia praecox,” was coined by Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, whose description of the illness remains a guiding force for modern investigators. Schizophrenia is a relatively common disorder, with a lifetime prevalence of about 1\%. Although the overall sex ratio is almost equal, males tend to have an earlier onset than females, a finding accounted for by the later age of onset in those females who lack a family history of the disease. ONSET Although most patients fall ill in late teenage or early adult years, the range of age of onset is wide: childhood onset may occur, and in some instances symptoms may not appear until the sixties. There may or may not be a prodrome before the actual onset of symptoms. In some cases the “pre-morbid personality” appears completely normal. In others, however, peculiarities may have been apparent for years or even decades before the onset. In cases where the prodrome began in childhood, the history may reveal introversion and peculiar interests. In cases where the prodrome began later, after the patient’s personality was formed, family members may recall a stretch of time wherein the patient “changed” and was no longer “the same.” Prior interests and habits may have been abandoned and replaced by a certain irritable seclusiveness, or perhaps suspiciousness. The onset of symptoms per se may be acute or insidious. Acute onsets tend to span a matter of weeks or months and may be characterized by confusion or at times by depressive symptoms. Patients may recognize that something is wrong, and they may make some desperate attempts to bring some order into the fragmenting experience of life. By contrast, in cases with an insidious onset the patient may not be particularly troubled at all. Over many months or a year or more, evanescent changes may occur: fleeting whispers, vague intimations, or strange occurrences. CLINICAL FEATURES Although the clinical presentation of schizophrenia varies widely among patients, certain signs and symptoms, though present to different degrees, are consistently present, and these include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and catatonic or bizarre behavior. “Negative” symptoms (e.g., flattening of affect) are often also seen but in some cases are quite mild. Generally, based on the constellation of symptoms present, one may classify any given case of schizophrenia into one of several subtypes, namely the paranoid, catatonic, hebephrenic (“disorganized”) and simple subtypes, with a large proportion of patients, however, failing to clearly fit any subtype and being characterized as having “undifferentiated” schizophrenia. Hallucinations are very common in schizophrenia. Patients may hear things, often voices, or they may see things; hallucinations of taste, touch, and smell may also occur. But of all these, the hearing of voices is most characteristic of schizophrenia. The voices may come from anywhere. They come from the air; God or angels send them. They may come from the television or radio; wiring may emanate the voices. Special devices may be planted in the walls or furniture. Sometimes they are in clothing; often they are localized to certain parts of the body. They come from the bowels, the liver, from “just behind the ear.” They may be male or female; the patient may or may not be able to recognize the identity of the speaker. It is a sibling, or a dead parent. Most often, though, the voices are not recognized as belonging to anyone; they are from strangers. They may be clear and easily understood; sometimes they are deafening and compelling—“everything else is shut out.” At other times they may be soft, “just a mumbling,” indistinct and fading. What the voices say is extremely varied: however, certain themes are relatively common. Voices may comment on what the patient is doing. Often two voices argue with one another about the patient. Often the voice echoes or repeats what the patient thought. Thoughts are “audible”; they are “heard out loud”; they are repeated on the television. At times “command hallucinations,” or voices that tell the patient what to do, may be heard. At times these are imperious and irresistible; at other times they are soft, “suggestive only.” Sometimes they command innocuous things; the patient may be directed to shave again. At other times they may command the patient to commit suicide or to hurt others. Usually the commands can be resisted, but not always. Sometimes they are overwhelmingly compelling— “they must be obeyed.” The patients generally hear only short phrases, perhaps single words. Only very rarely do the voices speak at length in a coherent way. Often the patient is tortured by the voices. Patients may hear threats of death, accusations of unspeakable sins, or announcements that the gallows are being erected. Rarely patients are encouraged or comforted by the voices. An angel’s voice may proclaim their divinity; seductive voices may whisper enticement; their names may be praised. Unutterable joys are set aside for them. Patients who hear such voices may have a beatific countenance. Most patients find the voices as real sounding as the voice of any other person. They may talk back to them out loud or may even argue with them. At times when the voices are 2 unpleasant, the patient may try to drown them out by listening to music or to the television. In addition to hearing voices patients may also hear sounds, such as a creaking or a rattling of chains. Footsteps or a tapping on the windows is heard. Hissing and whistling also may be heard. Sometimes a ringing of church bells or an explosion is heard. Hammering means the gallows are being constructed. Very rarely the patient may hear music. Visual hallucinations, though common, play a relatively less prominent part in the clinical picture of schizophrenia than do auditory hallucinations. They may be poorly formed, indistinct, seen only “out of the corner of the eye.” They may, however, be vivid and compellingly realistic. Strange people walk the halls; the devil in violent red appears in front of the patient; heads float through the air. Reptilian forms appear in the bath; things crawl in the food; a myriad of insects appear in the bedding. The electric chair is made ready; torturers approach; a chorus of sympathetic angels is seen. Hallucinations of smell and taste, though not common, may be particularly compelling to the patient. Poison gas is smelled; it seems to be coming from the heating ducts. The patient smells putrefied flesh, so the corpses must be buried nearby. At times inexpressibly beautiful perfumes are appreciated, a seduction seems close at hand. Tastes, often foul and bitter, may appear on the tongue “from nowhere.” Often, however, something is detected in food or drink. Patients detect something brackish, a poisonous or medicinal taste. Patients may refuse all food and drink and declare that they have had enough poison already. Hallucinations of touch, also known as haptic or tactile hallucinations, are relatively common. Something is crawling on them; a pricking is coming from behind. At night all manner of things are felt. Fluids are poured over the body; a caressing is felt, as are lips on all parts. Electrical sensations may be felt at any time. Sometimes patients may feel things inside their bodies. Their intestines shrivel up; the ovaries burst; the brain is pressed upon. Delusions are almost universal in schizophrenia. The content of the delusions is extremely varied: patients may feel persecuted; they may have grandiose ideas; all manner of things may refer and pertain to them; thoughts may be broadcast, withdrawn, or inserted into them; they may feel influenced and controlled by outside forces; bizarre, loathsome events may occur. These beliefs may grow in the patient slowly. At first there may be only an inkling, a suspicion; only with time does conviction occur. Conversely, sudden enlightenment may occur; all may be immediately clear. Sometimes patients may have lingering doubts about the truth of these beliefs, but for most they are as self-evident as any other belief. Occasionally patients may argue with those who disagree, but for the most part they do not press their case on the unbeliever. Most often the delusions are poorly coordinated with each other; typically they are contradictory and poorly elaborated. Occasionally, however, they may be systematized, and this is especially the case in the paranoid subtype. Delusions of persecution are particularly common. There is a conspiracy against the patient; the FBI has coordinated its efforts with the local police. Plain-clothes officers follow the patient. At times the surveillance is covert. Satellites are used. Listening devices have been placed in the walls; the telephone is tapped. The patient is followed by cars; headlights blink on and off to indicate that capture is imminent. The food is poisoned. Electrical currents are passed through the body at night; internal organs are horribly manipulated during sleep. Tortures are prepared; escape is not possible. Sometimes patients may stoically endure their persecution, and at other times they may fight back. To the patient, this unprovoked assault may be a justifiable defense. Other patients attempt to flee their persecutors and may move to another state. For a time they may feel less insecure, but eventually they see signs that they have been found and again the persecution begins. Some patients attempt to protect themselves against noxious influences by armoring themselves or their apartments. One patient who believed that persecutors sent electrical charges down through the ceiling at night papered the entire ceiling with aluminum foil and for a time felt protected. Grandiose delusions also occur frequently, often in conjugation with delusions of persecution. Patients are attacked by jealous enemies who seek to bar them from the throne. They are to be exalted; the angel of the Lord has visited them. Millions of dollars are kept secretly away from them. They embark for Washington; the President wishes their advice. Commonly most patients do not act on their delusions; rather they seem content to be comforted and sustained by them. Exceptions do occur, of course. One patient announced a plan for world happiness in a full-page newspaper ad; another sent a letter of advice to the Secretary of State. Delusions of reference are intimately tied to delusions of persecution or of grandeur. Here patients believe that otherwise chance occurrences or random encounters have special meaning for them. What was done refers to them; it pertains to them. A busboy leaves a particle of food on the table; it is an intentional offense to the patient. The street lights blink on; it is a sign for the persecutors to close in for the final attack. The television newscaster speaks in code; the songs on the radio hold special meaning for the patient. There are no more coincidences in life, no accidental happenings. To the grandiose patient the events of creation are exalting; to the persecuted patient, walking the streets can provoke a terrifying self-consciousness. Everything is pregnant with meaning. Some patients may develop some peculiarly bizarre beliefs about thinking itself, known as thought broadcasting, thought withdrawal, and thought insertion. In thought broadcasting patients experience thoughts as being broadcast from their heads, as if by electricity. “It is like radio broadcasting,” explained one patient. These thoughts may then be picked up by others. Some patients compare it to telepathy; some feel they can receive others’ thoughts. “There is mind reading going on,” commented one patient. Sometimes the television may broadcast their thoughts back to them. In thought withdrawal the patients’ thoughts are removed, taken from them. The mind is left blank. “There are no thoughts anymore,” complained one patient. Magnetic devices may be used; the thoughts are never returned. Patients who experience this symptom of thought withdrawal may concurrently, if they happen to be speaking their thoughts, display the sign known as “thought blocking.” Here, patients in the middle of speaking abruptly cease 3 talking, and this happens precisely because they abruptly find themselves with no thoughts to express. In thought insertion, a phenomenon opposite to that of thought withdrawal occurs. Here patients experienced the insertion of thoughts into their minds. The thoughts are alien, not their own; they were placed there by some other agency. The thoughts are transmitted toward them electrically; they can feel a tingling as they enter their brain. They cannot rid themselves of them. Allied to the foregoing three delusions are what are known as delusions of influence, or control. Patients experience their thoughts, emotions, or actions to be directly controlled by some outside force or agency. They are made to experience or do these things; they are like robots or automatons, without any independence of will. The influence may emanate from the television broadcast tower; a spell may be cast on them; a massive computer has merged its workings into them. They are not themselves anymore. Other delusions may occur. In fact any imaginable belief may be held, no matter how fantastic. Angels live in the patient’s nose; sulphur is cast on the body during sleep; parents have risen from their graves; all fluids have evaporated from the body. Another delusion is the delusion of doubles, also known as the “Capgras phenomenon,” or the delusion of impostors. Here the patient believes that someone, or something, has occupied the body of another. Although the body looks the same and the voice is the same, indeed, for all intents and purposes, it is the same person, yet the patient knows without doubt that it is an impostor. The patient may see subtle signs of it elsewhere; it is part of the conspiracy. The senses cannot be trusted anymore; appearances must be doubted. Doubles may be used for one’s spouse or children; no one is immune. The patient must be on guard at all times. Disorganized speech is the next symptom to consider. Here, we are concerned not so much with the content of the patient’s speech, that is to say with delusions, but rather with the form of speech. This “formal thought disorder” is most often characterized as “loosening of associations”; less frequently it is referred to as incoherence or “derailment.” The patient’s speech becomes illogical; ideas are juxtaposed that have no conceivable connection. A family member may say that the patient “doesn’t make sense.” At its extreme, loosening of associations may present as a veritable “word salad.” An example of loosening of associations follows. A patient was asked to report the previous day’s activities; the patient replied, in part, “The sun bestrides the mouse doctor. In the morning, if you wish. Twenty-five dollars is a lot of money! Large faces and eyes. Terrible smells. Rat in the socket. Can there be darkness? Oh, if you only knew!” Here any inner connection among the various ideas and concepts is lost; it is as if they came at random. Or to put it another way the thoughts are no longer “goal-directed”; they no longer cohere in pursuit of a common purpose. If patients are pressed to explain what they mean, they are unable to offer a satisfactory reply. The question may be responded to, but only with another incoherent utterance. Interestingly, also, these patients seem little concerned about their incoherence. They seem oblivious to it and make little if any effort to clarify what they say. Allied to loosening of associations are neologisms. These are words that occur in the normal course of the patient’s speech and that the patient treats as an integral part of it, but that convey no more meaning to the listener than if they were from a long-dead foreign language. To the patient, however, they have as much meaning and status as any other word, but that meaning is private and inaccessible to the listener. When one patient was offered a cup of coffee, the reply was, “Yes, doctor, thank you. With bufkuf.” When asked the meaning of “bufkuf,” the patient replied “Oh, you know,” and made no further effort to define or explain it. Catatonic symptoms include negativism, certain peculiar disturbances of voluntary activity known as catalepsy, posturing, stereotypies and echolalia or echopraxia. Negativism is characterized by a mulish, automatic, almost instinctual opposition to any course of action suggested, demanded, or merely expected. In some cases this negativism is passive: if food is placed in front of patients, they do not eat; if their clothes are set out for them, they do not dress; if a question is asked, they do not answer, and a bizarre scowl may mar the facial expression. In more extreme cases the negativism becomes active, and patients may do the exact opposite of what is expected: if shown to their room, they may enter another; if asked to open their mouths, they may clamp shut; if asked to walk from a burning room, they may walk back in. Such active negativism seems neither thought out nor done for a purpose; rather it appears instinctual, as if the patients themselves had no choice but to do the opposite. Remarkably, in some patients one may see the exact opposite of negativism in the symptom known as “automatic obedience.” Here, patients do whatever they are told to do, regardless of what it is. In the nineteenth century, one way to test for this symptom was to tell a patient that you wished him to stick the tongue out so that it might be pierced with a needle. Patients would protrude their tongues and not flinch when pierced by the needle. Catalepsy, or, as it is also known, waxy flexibility, is characterized by a state of continual and most unusual muscular tension. If one attempts to bend the patient’s arm, it is as if one were bending a length of thick metal wire, like soldering wire. Definite resistance, though not great enough to hinder movement, is nevertheless present. The remarkable aspect here is that, as in bending the wire, the patient retains whatever position the limb, or for that matter, the body, is placed in. This happens regardless of whether the patient is instructed to maintain the position or not. In this way the most uncomfortable, grotesque, and strenuous positions may be maintained for hours. This symptom, rarely seen in modern times, was common before the advent of antipsychotic medicines in the middle of the twentieth century. The back wards of state hospitals housed many catatonic patients who held their bodies in positions throughout each nursing shift, day in and day out. Posturing is said to occur when the patient, for no discernible reason, assumes and maintains a bizarre posture. One may keep the arms cocked; another stood bent at the waist to the side. Stereotypies are constituted by bizarre, perseverated behaviors. A patient may march back and forth along the same line for hours; another may repeatedly dress and undress. Other persons may be approached again and again, each time being asked the same question. The same piece of paper may be folded and unfolded until it disintegrates. Most patients can offer no reason for their senseless activity. When asked, a patient replied, “it must be so.” Echolalia and echopraxia are said to occur when the patient’s behavior mirrors that of the other person, and, importantly, 4 when this happens automatically, and in the absence of any request. If asked a question the echolalic patient will simply repeat it, sometimes over and over again. The echopraxic patient may clumsily mirror the gestures and posture of the interviewer and, as in echolalia, may continue to do this long after the other person has left, as if uncontrollably compelled to maintain the same activity. Here it as if the ability to will something independent of the environment has been lost, and the patient is thus left enslaved in a mimicry of whatever is close at hand. Bizarre behavior may manifest as mannerisms, bizarre affect or an overall disorganization and deterioration of behavior. Mannerisms are bizarre or odd caricatures of gestures, speech, or behavior. In manneristic gesturing patients may offer their hands to shake with the fingers splayed out, or the fingers may writhe in a peculiar, contorted way. In manneristic speech, cadence, modulation, or volume are erratic and dysmodulated. One patient may speak in a sing- song voice, another in a telegraphic style, and yet another with pompous accenting of random syllables. Overall behavior may become manneristic. Rather than walking, some patients may march in bizarre, stiff-legged fashion. Bizarre affect appears to represent a distortion of the normal connection between felt emotion and affective expression. Often, facial expression appears theatrical, wooden, or under a peculiar constraint. Patients may report feeling joy, yet the rapturous facial expression may appear brittle and tenuous. Conversely patients may report grief, and indeed tears may be present, yet the emotion lacks depth, as if patients were merely wearing a mask of grief that might disappear at any moment. Inappropriate affect may also be seen. Here the connection between the patient’s ideas and affect seems completely severed. A young patient, grief stricken at a parent’s funeral, was seen to snicker; another patient, relating the infernal tortures suffered just the night before, smiled beatifically. Another, very important form of bizarre affect is unprovoked and mirthless laughter. For no apparent reason patients may break into bizarre and unrestrainable laughter. Though appearing neither happy nor amused, the laughter continues. Some patients report that they were unable to not laugh, that the laughter moved itself no matter how they felt. The overall deterioration of behavior in schizophrenia is what often makes these patients “stand out” in public. Patients become untidy and may neglect to bathe or wash their clothes; the fingernails may become very long. Dress and grooming may become bizarre. Several layers of clothing are often worn, even during the summer. Bits of string or cloth may festoon the patient’s hair or garments; makeup may be smeared on. Not uncommonly, paranoid patients shave their heads, and this often reliably predicts an oncoming exacerbation of illness, and also some form of self- mutilation. Patients may pluck out their eyelashes or cut deep gouges in their legs. Some seem to be almost completely analgesic: an eye may be plucked out; pieces of flesh may be bitten off; in extreme cases, self-evisceration may occur, “just to see” what the intestines look like. Although most often no purpose seems to drive this bizarre behavior, at times the patient may offer a reason. One patient wallpapered the walls, ceiling, and floors with aluminum foil “to keep the rays out”; another kept cotton in the ears “to keep the voices away.” Negative symptoms include flattening of affect, alogia (also commonly known as poverty of speech and thought), and avolition. Flattening of affect, also known, when less severe, as “blunting” of affect, is characterized by a lifeless and wooden facial expression accompanied by an absence or diminution of all feelings. This is quite different from a depressed appearance. In depression patients appear drained or weighted down; there is a definite sense of something there. In flattening, however, patients seem to have nothing to express; they are simply devoid of emotion. They appear unmoved, wooden, and almost at times as if they were machines. Poverty of speech is said to occur when patients, though perhaps talking a normal amount, seem to “say” very little. There is a dearth of meaningful content to what they say and speech is often composed of stock phrases and repetitions. Poverty of thought is characterized by a far-reaching impoverishment of the entire thinking of the patient. The patient may complain of having “no thoughts,” that “the head is empty,” that there are no “stirrings.” Of its own accord nothing “comes to mind.” If pressed by a question the patient may offer a sparse reply, then fail to say anything else. Avolition, referred to by Kraepelin as “annihilation of the will,” is said to be present when patients have lost the capacity to embark on almost any goal-directed activity. Bills are not paid; the house is not cleaned; infants are neither changed nor fed. This is not because patients feel inhibited, lack interest, or suffer from fatigue, but rather because the ability to will an action has become deficient. Before leaving this discussion of the individual signs and symptoms of schizophrenia and proceeding to a discussion of subtypes, two other symptoms, neither of which fit neatly into the categories employed above, should be mentioned, namely ambivalence and “double bookkeeping.” Ambivalence may render patients incapable of almost any volitional activity. Here, patients experience two opposed courses of action at the same time, and for lack of ability to decide between them, do nothing. One patient stood at the washstand for hours unable to decide whether to shave or to use the toothbrush. This “paralysis of will,” however, may at times be easily removed if another person gives directions. In this case an aide simply told the patient to brush his teeth and then put the toothbrush in the patient’s hand. Immediately and with peculiar alacrity the patient then set to brushing his teeth. This kind of ambivalence found in schizophrenia is to be distinguished from the indecisiveness seen at times in depression and the “normal” ambivalence that anyone may experience. The depressed patient’s inability to embark on decision-making stems more from a lack of energy and initiative; unlike the patient with schizophrenia, the depressed patient generally is not able to act when others make the decision. In normal circumstances competing desires may leave the patient unable to decide. With time, however, a normal person makes a decision because the capacity to do so is not lost. In schizophrenia, however, it is this very capacity that is no longer present. “Double bookkeeping,” a phenomenon first identified by Bleuler, refers to the patient’s ability to, as it were, live in two worlds at the same time. On the one hand is the world of voices, visions, and delusions, and on the other hand, and 5 quite coincident with this psychotic world, is the world as perceived by others. To the patient both worlds seem quite real. For example, a patient may hear a voice as clearly as the voice of the physician and believe it just as real, yet at the same time acknowledge that the physician does not hear it. Or the grandiose patient who fully believed that a coronation was imminent may yet continue to work at a janitor’s job and go on doing so, living in two worlds, and feeling little if any conflict between them. A variant of double bookkeeping, known as “double orientation,” or “delusional disorientation,” may at times mislead the interviewer into thinking that the patient is disoriented. For example, a grandiose patient believed that he was John F. Kennedy, and when asked what year it was replied 1962. Later on, however, when filling out a form, he put down the correct year. Subtypes of schizophrenia are characterized by particular constellations of symptoms and include the following: paranoid, catatonic, hebephrenic (or “disorganized”), and simple (which has also been referred to as “simple deteriorative disorder”). Patients whose illness does not fall into any of these subtypes are said to have an “undifferentiated” subtype. Subtype diagnosing is not an academic exercise, for, as discussed under Course, the different subtypes may have different prognoses. Furthermore, knowing the subtype allows one to predict with better confidence how any given patient might react in any specific situation. Paranoid schizophrenia, which tends to have a later onset than the other subtypes, is characterized primarily by … Schizophrenia Introduction Schizophrenia in most cases is a debilitating illness classified by behavior, affect and perturbations in cognition. All of these tend to have some bizarre aspect. Hallucinations, usually auditory in nature and delusions, usually bizarre, also are typical of this mental illness. The first identification of schizophrenia was known as “dementia praecox” by Emily Kraepelin, whose description of the illness till date remains the guiding force in the modern investigation of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has a lifetime prevalence of around 1\%. The sex ratio is nearly equal however men to experience earlier onsets as opposed to women. Most patients suffering from schizophrenia fall ill in their late teens or early adulthood. Schizophrenia may or may not have a prodome before its onset i.e. “pre-onset” personality can appear normal. Symptoms The onset of symptoms per se may be acute or insidious. Acute onsets tend to span a matter of weeks or months and may be characterized by confusion or at times by depressive symptoms. Patients may recognize that something is wrong, and they may make some desperate attempts to bring some order into the fragmenting experience of life. By contrast, in cases with an insidious onset the patient may not be particularly troubled at all. Over many months or a year or more, evanescent changes may occur: fleeting whispers, vague intimations, or strange occurrences. Schizophrenia (DSM-IV-TR #295.1–295.3, 295.90) Schizophrenia is a chronic, more or less debilitating illness characterized by perturbations in cognition, affect and behavior, all of which have a bizarre aspect. Delusions, also generally bizarre, and hallucinations, generally auditory in type, also typically occur. The original name for this illness, “dementia praecox,” was coined by Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, whose description of the illness remains a guiding force for modern investigators. Schizophrenia is a relatively common disorder, with a lifetime prevalence of about 1\%. Although the overall sex ratio is almost equal, males tend to have an earlier onset than females, a finding accounted for by the later age of onset in those females who lack a family history of the disease. ONSET Although most patients fall ill in late teenage or early adult years, the range of age of onset is wide: childhood onset may occur, and in some instances symptoms may not appear until the sixties. There may or may not be a prodrome before the actual onset of symptoms. In some cases the “pre-morbid personality” appears completely normal. In others, however, peculiarities may have been apparent for years or even decades before the onset. In cases where the prodrome began in childhood, the history may reveal introversion and peculiar interests. In cases where the prodrome began later, after the patient’s personality was formed, family members may recall a stretch of time wherein the patient “changed” and was no longer “the same.” Prior interests and habits may have been abandoned and replaced by a certain irritable seclusiveness, or perhaps suspiciousness. The onset of symptoms per se may be acute or insidious. Acute onsets tend to span a matter of weeks or months and may be characterized by confusion or at times by depressive symptoms. Patients may recognize that something is wrong, and they may make some desperate attempts to bring some order into the fragmenting experience of life. By contrast, in cases with an insidious onset the patient may not be particularly troubled at all. Over many months or a year or more, evanescent changes may occur: fleeting whispers, vague intimations, or strange occurrences. CLINICAL FEATURES Although the clinical presentation of schizophrenia varies widely among patients, certain signs and symptoms, though present to different degrees, are consistently present, and these include hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and catatonic or bizarre behavior. “Negative” symptoms (e.g., flattening of affect) are often also seen but in some cases are quite mild. Generally, based on the constellation of symptoms present, one may classify any given case of schizophrenia into one of several subtypes, namely the paranoid, catatonic, hebephrenic (“disorganized”) and simple subtypes, with a large proportion of patients, however, failing to clearly fit any subtype and being characterized as having “undifferentiated” schizophrenia. Hallucinations are very common in schizophrenia. Patients may hear things, often voices, or they may see things; hallucinations of taste, touch, and smell may also occur. But of all these, the hearing of voices is most characteristic of schizophrenia. The voices may come from anywhere. They come from the air; God or angels send them. They may come from the television or radio; wiring may emanate the voices. Special devices may be planted in the walls or furniture. Sometimes they are in clothing; often they are localized to certain parts of the body. They come from the bowels, the liver, from “just behind the ear.” They may be male or female; the patient may or may not be able to recognize the identity of the speaker. It is a sibling, or a dead parent. Most often, though, the voices are not recognized as belonging to anyone; they are from strangers. They may be clear and easily understood; sometimes they are deafening and compelling—“everything else is shut out.” At other times they may be soft, “just a mumbling,” indistinct and fading. What the voices say is extremely varied: however, certain themes are relatively common. Voices may comment on what the patient is doing. Often two voices argue with one another about the patient. Often the voice echoes or repeats what the patient thought. Thoughts are “audible”; they are “heard out loud”; they are repeated on the television. At times “command hallucinations,” or voices that tell the patient what to do, may be heard. At times these are imperious and irresistible; at other times they are soft, “suggestive only.” Sometimes they command innocuous things; the patient may be directed to shave again. At other times they may command the patient to commit suicide or to hurt others. Usually the commands can be resisted, but not always. Sometimes they are overwhelmingly compelling— “they must be obeyed.” The patients generally hear only short phrases, perhaps single words. Only very rarely do the voices speak at length in a coherent way. Often the patient is tortured by the voices. Patients may hear threats of death, accusations of unspeakable sins, or announcements that the gallows are being erected. Rarely patients are encouraged or comforted by the voices. An angel’s voice may proclaim their divinity; seductive voices may whisper enticement; their names may be praised. Unutterable joys are set aside for them. Patients who hear such voices may have a beatific countenance. Most patients find the voices as real sounding as the voice of any other person. They may talk back to them out loud or may even argue with them. At times when the voices are 2 unpleasant, the patient may try to drown them out by listening to music or to the television. In addition to hearing voices patients may also hear sounds, such as a creaking or a rattling of chains. Footsteps or a tapping on the windows is heard. Hissing and whistling also may be heard. Sometimes a ringing of church bells or an explosion is heard. Hammering means the gallows are being constructed. Very rarely the patient may hear music. Visual hallucinations, though common, play a relatively less prominent part in the clinical picture of schizophrenia than do auditory hallucinations. They may be poorly formed, indistinct, seen only “out of the corner of the eye.” They may, however, be vivid and compellingly realistic. Strange people walk the halls; the devil in violent red appears in front of the patient; heads float through the air. Reptilian forms appear in the bath; things crawl in the food; a myriad of insects appear in the bedding. The electric chair is made ready; torturers approach; a chorus of sympathetic angels is seen. Hallucinations of smell and taste, though not common, may be particularly compelling to the patient. Poison gas is smelled; it seems to be coming from the heating ducts. The patient smells putrefied flesh, so the corpses must be buried nearby. At times inexpressibly beautiful perfumes are appreciated, a seduction seems close at hand. Tastes, often foul and bitter, may appear on the tongue “from nowhere.” Often, however, something is detected in food or drink. Patients detect something brackish, a poisonous or medicinal taste. Patients may refuse all food and drink and declare that they have had enough poison already. Hallucinations of touch, also known as haptic or tactile hallucinations, are relatively common. Something is crawling on them; a pricking is coming from behind. At night all manner of things are felt. Fluids are poured over the body; a caressing is felt, as are lips on all parts. Electrical sensations may be felt at any time. Sometimes patients may feel things inside their bodies. Their intestines shrivel up; the ovaries burst; the brain is pressed upon. Delusions are almost universal in schizophrenia. The content of the delusions is extremely varied: patients may feel persecuted; they may have grandiose ideas; all manner of things may refer and pertain to them; thoughts may be broadcast, withdrawn, or inserted into them; they may feel influenced and controlled by outside forces; bizarre, loathsome events may occur. These beliefs may grow in the patient slowly. At first there may be only an inkling, a suspicion; only with time does conviction occur. Conversely, sudden enlightenment may occur; all may be immediately clear. Sometimes patients may have lingering doubts about the truth of these beliefs, but for most they are as self-evident as any other belief. Occasionally patients may argue with those who disagree, but for the most part they do not press their case on the unbeliever. Most often the delusions are poorly coordinated with each other; typically they are contradictory and poorly elaborated. Occasionally, however, they may be systematized, and this is especially the case in the paranoid subtype. Delusions of persecution are particularly common. There is a conspiracy against the patient; the FBI has coordinated its efforts with the local police. Plain-clothes officers follow the patient. At times the surveillance is covert. Satellites are used. Listening devices have been placed in the walls; the telephone is tapped. The patient is followed by cars; headlights blink on and off to indicate that capture is imminent. The food is poisoned. Electrical currents are passed through the body at night; internal organs are horribly manipulated during sleep. Tortures are prepared; escape is not possible. Sometimes patients may stoically endure their persecution, and at other times they may fight back. To the patient, this unprovoked assault may be a justifiable defense. Other patients attempt to flee their persecutors and may move to another state. For a time they may feel less insecure, but eventually they see signs that they have been found and again the persecution begins. Some patients attempt to protect themselves against noxious influences by armoring themselves or their apartments. One patient who believed that persecutors sent electrical charges down through the ceiling at night papered the entire ceiling with aluminum foil and for a time felt protected. Grandiose delusions also occur frequently, often in conjugation with delusions of persecution. Patients are attacked by jealous enemies who seek to bar them from the throne. They are to be exalted; the angel of the Lord has visited them. Millions of dollars are kept secretly away from them. They embark for Washington; the President wishes their advice. Commonly most patients do not act on their delusions; rather they seem content to be comforted and sustained by them. Exceptions do occur, of course. One patient announced a plan for world happiness in a full-page newspaper ad; another sent a letter of advice to the Secretary of State. Delusions of reference are intimately tied to delusions of persecution or of grandeur. Here patients believe that otherwise chance occurrences or random encounters have special meaning for them. What was done refers to them; it pertains to them. A busboy leaves a particle of food on the table; it is an intentional offense to the patient. The street lights blink on; it is a sign for the persecutors to close in for the final attack. The television newscaster speaks in code; the songs on the radio hold special meaning for the patient. There are no more coincidences in life, no accidental happenings. To the grandiose patient the events of creation are exalting; to the persecuted patient, walking the streets can provoke a terrifying self-consciousness. Everything is pregnant with meaning. Some patients may develop some peculiarly bizarre beliefs about thinking itself, known as thought broadcasting, thought withdrawal, and thought insertion. In thought broadcasting patients experience thoughts as being broadcast from their heads, as if by electricity. “It is like radio broadcasting,” explained one patient. These thoughts may then be picked up by others. Some patients compare it to telepathy; some feel they can receive others’ thoughts. “There is mind reading going on,” commented one patient. Sometimes the television may broadcast their thoughts back to them. In thought withdrawal the patients’ thoughts are removed, taken from them. The mind is left blank. “There are no thoughts anymore,” complained one patient. Magnetic devices may be used; the thoughts are never returned. Patients who experience this symptom of thought withdrawal may concurrently, if they happen to be speaking their thoughts, display the sign known as “thought blocking.” Here, patients in the middle of speaking abruptly cease 3 talking, and this happens precisely because they abruptly find themselves with no thoughts to express. In thought insertion, a phenomenon opposite to that of thought withdrawal occurs. Here patients experienced the insertion of thoughts into their minds. The thoughts are alien, not their own; they were placed there by some other agency. The thoughts are transmitted toward them electrically; they can feel a tingling as they enter their brain. They cannot rid themselves of them. Allied to the foregoing three delusions are what are known as delusions of influence, or control. Patients experience their thoughts, emotions, or actions to be directly controlled by some outside force or agency. They are made to experience or do these things; they are like robots or automatons, without any independence of will. The influence may emanate from the television broadcast tower; a spell may be cast on them; a massive computer has merged its workings into them. They are not themselves anymore. Other delusions may occur. In fact any imaginable belief may be held, no matter how fantastic. Angels live in the patient’s nose; sulphur is cast on the body during sleep; parents have risen from their graves; all fluids have evaporated from the body. Another delusion is the delusion of doubles, also known as the “Capgras phenomenon,” or the delusion of impostors. Here the patient believes that someone, or something, has occupied the body of another. Although the body looks the same and the voice is the same, indeed, for all intents and purposes, it is the same person, yet the patient knows without doubt that it is an impostor. The patient may see subtle signs of it elsewhere; it is part of the conspiracy. The senses cannot be trusted anymore; appearances must be doubted. Doubles may be used for one’s spouse or children; no one is immune. The patient must be on guard at all times. Disorganized speech is the next symptom to consider. Here, we are concerned not so much with the content of the patient’s speech, that is to say with delusions, but rather with the form of speech. This “formal thought disorder” is most often characterized as “loosening of associations”; less frequently it is referred to as incoherence or “derailment.” The patient’s speech becomes illogical; ideas are juxtaposed that have no conceivable connection. A family member may say that the patient “doesn’t make sense.” At its extreme, loosening of associations may present as a veritable “word salad.” An example of loosening of associations follows. A patient was asked to report the previous day’s activities; the patient replied, in part, “The sun bestrides the mouse doctor. In the morning, if you wish. Twenty-five dollars is a lot of money! Large faces and eyes. Terrible smells. Rat in the socket. Can there be darkness? Oh, if you only knew!” Here any inner connection among the various ideas and concepts is lost; it is as if they came at random. Or to put it another way the thoughts are no longer “goal-directed”; they no longer cohere in pursuit of a common purpose. If patients are pressed to explain what they mean, they are unable to offer a satisfactory reply. The question may be responded to, but only with another incoherent utterance. Interestingly, also, these patients seem little concerned about their incoherence. They seem oblivious to it and make little if any effort to clarify what they say. Allied to loosening of associations are neologisms. These are words that occur in the normal course of the patient’s speech and that the patient treats as an integral part of it, but that convey no more meaning to the listener than if they were from a long-dead foreign language. To the patient, however, they have as much meaning and status as any other word, but that meaning is private and inaccessible to the listener. When one patient was offered a cup of coffee, the reply was, “Yes, doctor, thank you. With bufkuf.” When asked the meaning of “bufkuf,” the patient replied “Oh, you know,” and made no further effort to define or explain it. Catatonic symptoms include negativism, certain peculiar disturbances of voluntary activity known as catalepsy, posturing, stereotypies and echolalia or echopraxia. Negativism is characterized by a mulish, automatic, almost instinctual opposition to any course of action suggested, demanded, or merely expected. In some cases this negativism is passive: if food is placed in front of patients, they do not eat; if their clothes are set out for them, they do not dress; if a question is asked, they do not answer, and a bizarre scowl may mar the facial expression. In more extreme cases the negativism becomes active, and patients may do the exact opposite of what is expected: if shown to their room, they may enter another; if asked to open their mouths, they may clamp shut; if asked to walk from a burning room, they may walk back in. Such active negativism seems neither thought out nor done for a purpose; rather it appears instinctual, as if the patients themselves had no choice but to do the opposite. Remarkably, in some patients one may see the exact opposite of negativism in the symptom known as “automatic obedience.” Here, patients do whatever they are told to do, regardless of what it is. In the nineteenth century, one way to test for this symptom was to tell a patient that you wished him to stick the tongue out so that it might be pierced with a needle. Patients would protrude their tongues and not flinch when pierced by the needle. Catalepsy, or, as it is also known, waxy flexibility, is characterized by a state of continual and most unusual muscular tension. If one attempts to bend the patient’s arm, it is as if one were bending a length of thick metal wire, like soldering wire. Definite resistance, though not great enough to hinder movement, is nevertheless present. The remarkable aspect here is that, as in bending the wire, the patient retains whatever position the limb, or for that matter, the body, is placed in. This happens regardless of whether the patient is instructed to maintain the position or not. In this way the most uncomfortable, grotesque, and strenuous positions may be maintained for hours. This symptom, rarely seen in modern times, was common before the advent of antipsychotic medicines in the middle of the twentieth century. The back wards of state hospitals housed many catatonic patients who held their bodies in positions throughout each nursing shift, day in and day out. Posturing is said to occur when the patient, for no discernible reason, assumes and maintains a bizarre posture. One may keep the arms cocked; another stood bent at the waist to the side. Stereotypies are constituted by bizarre, perseverated behaviors. A patient may march back and forth along the same line for hours; another may repeatedly dress and undress. Other persons may be approached again and again, each time being asked the same question. The same piece of paper may be folded and unfolded until it disintegrates. Most patients can offer no reason for their senseless activity. When asked, a patient replied, “it must be so.” Echolalia and echopraxia are said to occur when the patient’s behavior mirrors that of the other person, and, importantly, 4 when this happens automatically, and in the absence of any request. If asked a question the echolalic patient will simply repeat it, sometimes over and over again. The echopraxic patient may clumsily mirror the gestures and posture of the interviewer and, as in echolalia, may continue to do this long after the other person has left, as if uncontrollably compelled to maintain the same activity. Here it as if the ability to will something independent of the environment has been lost, and the patient is thus left enslaved in a mimicry of whatever is close at hand. Bizarre behavior may manifest as mannerisms, bizarre affect or an overall disorganization and deterioration of behavior. Mannerisms are bizarre or odd caricatures of gestures, speech, or behavior. In manneristic gesturing patients may offer their hands to shake with the fingers splayed out, or the fingers may writhe in a peculiar, contorted way. In manneristic speech, cadence, modulation, or volume are erratic and dysmodulated. One patient may speak in a sing- song voice, another in a telegraphic style, and yet another with pompous accenting of random syllables. Overall behavior may become manneristic. Rather than walking, some patients may march in bizarre, stiff-legged fashion. Bizarre affect appears to represent a distortion of the normal connection between felt emotion and affective expression. Often, facial expression appears theatrical, wooden, or under a peculiar constraint. Patients may report feeling joy, yet the rapturous facial expression may appear brittle and tenuous. Conversely patients may report grief, and indeed tears may be present, yet the emotion lacks depth, as if patients were merely wearing a mask of grief that might disappear at any moment. Inappropriate affect may also be seen. Here the connection between the patient’s ideas and affect seems completely severed. A young patient, grief stricken at a parent’s funeral, was seen to snicker; another patient, relating the infernal tortures suffered just the night before, smiled beatifically. Another, very important form of bizarre affect is unprovoked and mirthless laughter. For no apparent reason patients may break into bizarre and unrestrainable laughter. Though appearing neither happy nor amused, the laughter continues. Some patients report that they were unable to not laugh, that the laughter moved itself no matter how they felt. The overall deterioration of behavior in schizophrenia is what often makes these patients “stand out” in public. Patients become untidy and may neglect to bathe or wash their clothes; the fingernails may become very long. Dress and grooming may become bizarre. Several layers of clothing are often worn, even during the summer. Bits of string or cloth may festoon the patient’s hair or garments; makeup may be smeared on. Not uncommonly, paranoid patients shave their heads, and this often reliably predicts an oncoming exacerbation of illness, and also some form of self- mutilation. Patients may pluck out their eyelashes or cut deep gouges in their legs. Some seem to be almost completely analgesic: an eye may be plucked out; pieces of flesh may be bitten off; in extreme cases, self-evisceration may occur, “just to see” what the intestines look like. Although most often no purpose seems to drive this bizarre behavior, at times the patient may offer a reason. One patient wallpapered the walls, ceiling, and floors with aluminum foil “to keep the rays out”; another kept cotton in the ears “to keep the voices away.” Negative symptoms include flattening of affect, alogia (also commonly known as poverty of speech and thought), and avolition. Flattening of affect, also known, when less severe, as “blunting” of affect, is characterized by a lifeless and wooden facial expression accompanied by an absence or diminution of all feelings. This is quite different from a depressed appearance. In depression patients appear drained or weighted down; there is a definite sense of something there. In flattening, however, patients seem to have nothing to express; they are simply devoid of emotion. They appear unmoved, wooden, and almost at times as if they were machines. Poverty of speech is said to occur when patients, though perhaps talking a normal amount, seem to “say” very little. There is a dearth of meaningful content to what they say and speech is often composed of stock phrases and repetitions. Poverty of thought is characterized by a far-reaching impoverishment of the entire thinking of the patient. The patient may complain of having “no thoughts,” that “the head is empty,” that there are no “stirrings.” Of its own accord nothing “comes to mind.” If pressed by a question the patient may offer a sparse reply, then fail to say anything else. Avolition, referred to by Kraepelin as “annihilation of the will,” is said to be present when patients have lost the capacity to embark on almost any goal-directed activity. Bills are not paid; the house is not cleaned; infants are neither changed nor fed. This is not because patients feel inhibited, lack interest, or suffer from fatigue, but rather because the ability to will an action has become deficient. Before leaving this discussion of the individual signs and symptoms of schizophrenia and proceeding to a discussion of subtypes, two other symptoms, neither of which fit neatly into the categories employed above, should be mentioned, namely ambivalence and “double bookkeeping.” Ambivalence may render patients incapable of almost any volitional activity. Here, patients experience two opposed courses of action at the same time, and for lack of ability to decide between them, do nothing. One patient stood at the washstand for hours unable to decide whether to shave or to use the toothbrush. This “paralysis of will,” however, may at times be easily removed if another person gives directions. In this case an aide simply told the patient to brush his teeth and then put the toothbrush in the patient’s hand. Immediately and with peculiar alacrity the patient then set to brushing his teeth. This kind of ambivalence found in schizophrenia is to be distinguished from the indecisiveness seen at times in depression and the “normal” ambivalence that anyone may experience. The depressed patient’s inability to embark on decision-making stems more from a lack of energy and initiative; unlike the patient with schizophrenia, the depressed patient generally is not able to act when others make the decision. In normal circumstances competing desires may leave the patient unable to decide. With time, however, a normal person makes a decision because the capacity to do so is not lost. In schizophrenia, however, it is this very capacity that is no longer present. “Double bookkeeping,” a phenomenon first identified by Bleuler, refers to the patient’s ability to, as it were, live in two worlds at the same time. On the one hand is the world of voices, visions, and delusions, and on the other hand, and 5 quite coincident with this psychotic world, is the world as perceived by others. To the patient both worlds seem quite real. For example, a patient may hear a voice as clearly as the voice of the physician and believe it just as real, yet at the same time acknowledge that the physician does not hear it. Or the grandiose patient who fully believed that a coronation was imminent may yet continue to work at a janitor’s job and go on doing so, living in two worlds, and feeling little if any conflict between them. A variant of double bookkeeping, known as “double orientation,” or “delusional disorientation,” may at times mislead the interviewer into thinking that the patient is disoriented. For example, a grandiose patient believed that he was John F. Kennedy, and when asked what year it was replied 1962. Later on, however, when filling out a form, he put down the correct year. Subtypes of schizophrenia are characterized by particular constellations of symptoms and include the following: paranoid, catatonic, hebephrenic (or “disorganized”), and simple (which has also been referred to as “simple deteriorative disorder”). Patients whose illness does not fall into any of these subtypes are said to have an “undifferentiated” subtype. Subtype diagnosing is not an academic exercise, for, as discussed under Course, the different subtypes may have different prognoses. Furthermore, knowing the subtype allows one to predict with better confidence how any given patient might react in any specific situation. Paranoid schizophrenia, which tends to have a later onset than the other subtypes, is characterized primarily by …