The Concept of Positive and Negative Schizophrenia in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Abstract

Schizophrenic psychoses in childhood are important but rare disorders within the spectrum of psychoses. They had been delineated as specific psychotic disorders only at the end of the 1930s (Lutz 1937/1938). At the end of the 1950s and 1960s, it became evident that age and developmental stage may be looked upon as important criteria for the classification of childhood psychoses (GAP 1966; Stutte 1969), which was demonstrated by several empirical studies (Rutter et al. 1967; Kolvin et al. 1971 a-d). Finally, these studies confirmed the notion of Kanner (1943, 1957) who subdivided psychoses in childhood into three groups: early infantile autism, childhood schizophrenia, and disintegrative psychoses of childhood, the last comprising disorders such as dementia infantilis (Heller 1908) and psychoses related to different kinds of brain damage. These aspects have also influenced the multiaxial classification system on the basis of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9) (Rutter et al. 1976) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III and DSM- III-R) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA 1980, 1987). Both classification systems differentiate between early infantile autism, childhood schizophrenia, and early childhood dementia.