Abstract

Proceeding from Kraeplin's original a brief summary is given of the literature about the extensive interpretations of the term paraphrenia. Our study is based on a catamnestic examination of schizophrenic diseases first acute in 1930-1940 after 30 respectively 40 years (H. Hinterhuber) and a second group of paraphrenics who at the time being have been under our control for five years. By a simplifying scheme our own conception of paraphrenia is then defined and differentiated from the paranoid schizophrenia and the development of paranoia with special reference to the characteristic juxaposition of schizophrenic symptomatic in otherwise intact personality without a noteworthy derangement of the evironmental relations. The intact personality stands in clear contrast to the only "intact outside personality' with schizophrenic derangement of the ego. Thus the paraphrenic has the possibility to withdraw to the core of his sound personality and erect a mostly stable barrier against the partly massive hallucinations on the periphery of his personality. This corresponds to a passive attitude of avoidance in the sense of behaviour psychology. As THEREFORE the paraphrenic, similar to the phobic, tends to confine the borders of his existence by an increasingly passive avoidance attitude, he tries by a systematic desensibilisation to keep the borders of existence just in the area between psychosis and sound personality and thus render the best possible extent of personality development avoiding secondary restrictions.