Bleuler's Dementia Psychiatric Analysis

Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist, referred schizophrenia to “dementia praecox”. He attributed the psychotic symptoms such as paranoia, catatonia as subtypes to the “dementia praecox”, and investigated the time of onset and prognosis according to their similarities. He disapproved in diagnosing schizophrenia based on different individual symptoms, but perceived it as a whole clinical picture because of its degenerative process. Eugen Bleuler was a pioneer to use “schizophrenia” this term. The term “schizo” means split and the term “phren” refers to “mind or intellect”. The concept of schizophrenia of Bleuler is different from Kraepelin, as Bleuler put a lot of effort in investigating the schizophrenic symptoms and categorizing them into
fundamental and accessory symptoms. In 1900, Kurt Schneider discovered that the first-rank symptoms of schizophrenia were hallucinations and delusions. In the beginning of 1980, researchers started to emphasize the difference between positive and negative symptoms.