Negative Versus Positive Schizophrenia

Abstract

The positive versus negative distinction of schizophrenic disorders has pro moted ongoing research. Phenomenology, psychopathology, biology, genet ics, pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment, psychosocial and longitudinal research: all have found a new focus of interest. This volume attempts to provide an unbiased picture of the status of American and Eu ropean knowledge regarding the positive/negative distinction. Researchers from North America and Europe describe the relation of modern concepts of positive and negative symptomatology to the original models of Rey nolds and Jackson. Integrating phenomenological, genetic, and biological factors, the authors depict current methods of assessing positive and nega tive symptomatology, differentiating between primary and secondary symp tomatology, and using pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment. The stability of positive and negative symptoms over time and evidence for the occurrence of separate positive and negative episodes over a long-term course of schizophrenia are extensively discussed in terms of their implica tions on the positive/negative construct. The relevance of the positive/nega tive dichotomy to child and adolescent schizophrenia is also debated. The main aim of this book is not to advocate a single concept and present only arguments supporting it, but to discuss important controversies. Prob lems concerning a concept cannot be solved by ignoring them. However, unanswered questions may be resolved through discussion, debate, and con structive compromise. Dichotomies and Other Distinctions in Schizophrenia -- Positive and Negative Signals: A Conceptual History -- Positive and Negative Symptoms: Assessment and Validity -- Assessment of Negative Symptoms: Instruments and Evaluation Criteria -- Methodological Problems in Identifying and Measuring First-Rank Symptoms of Schizophrenia -- Anhedonia and the Amotivational State of Schizophrenia -- Constituting Reality -- Its Decline and Repair in the Long-Term Course of Schizophrenic Psychoses: The Intentionality Model -- Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia: Relationships to Positive Symptoms and Outcome -- Negative Symptoms: A Critique of Current Approaches -- Are There Two Types of Schizophrenia? True Onset and Sequence of Positive and Negative Syndromes Prior to First Admission -- Dependence, Independence or Interdependence of Positive and Negative Symptoms -- Long-Term Monomorphism of Negative and Positive Schizophrenic Episodes -- Premorbid and Sociodemographic Features of Schizophrenia with Positive and Negative Initial Episodes -- Long-Term Outcome of Patients with a Positive Initial Episode Versus Patients with a Negative Initial Episode -- The Concept of Positive and Negative Schizophrenia in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry -- Negative Symptoms in the Long-Term Course of Childhood Schizophrenia: A Discussion Contribution -- The Negative/Positive Dichotomy: Does It Make Sense from the Perspective of the Genetic Researcher? -- Genetic Transmission of Negative and Positive Symptoms in the Biological Relatives of Schizophrenics -- Neuropathological and Brain Imaging Studies in Positive and Negative Schizophrenia -- Explorations of Dopamine and Noradrenaline Activity and Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia: Concepts and Controversies -- Typical Neuropleptics in the Treatment of Positive and Negative Symptoms -- The Effect of Clozapine and Other Atypical Antipsychotic Drugs on Negative Symptoms -- The Treatment of Positive and Negative Schizophrenic Symptoms with Dopamine Agonists -- Nonpharmacological Treatment Concepts of Negative Symptomatology -- The Demise of the Kraepelinian Binary Concept and the Aetiological Unity of the Psychoses -- Positive and Negative Symptomatology: The State of Affairs.