Paraschizophrenia

Relation of schizophrenia to constitutional mental weakness ; identity of mental debility from constitutional lack of sense and reality, and paraschizophrenia.

This is a good layman's description of environment-motivated and finally consciously induced paraschizophrenia - 'madness as lubricant", in Karen Horney's famous phrase.

Zurabashvili has made a special clinical-psychopathological analysis of schizophrenia-like conditions of a reactive origin; these conditions, which he designates as paraschizophrenia, are close to schizophrenia, but radically differ from its true forms in their clinical picture and prognosis. Cases of paraschizophrenia make up that positive factual material which certain foreign psychiatrists fo not wish to see

onset schizophrenia0like psychosis (onset after 60 years). These received a mixed welcome. I think we made the latter group's name too long but as we discovered at the 1998 Consensus meeting, it is difficult to be unambiguous in such a title without being long-winded. At the meeting, Nancy Andreasen with her quick journalist's eye for a snappy title suggested that we should call such cases 'paraschizophrenia' and, although this did not attract much support at the time, the more I think about this the more I