The British Journal of Psychiatry 136: 437-444 (1980)
© 1980 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Contradictory issues in the origin of schizophrenia
K Leonhard
In research into the origin of schizophrenia discrepancies repeatedly arise
through the habit of treating schizophrenia as an entity. If independent
subforms are differentiated, many ambiguities can be cleared up. A special
form of catatonia (periodic catatonia) seems to be transmitted by dominant
inheritance, a special paraphrenia (affective paraphrenia) recessively. In
a large group of schizophrenias (systematic schizophrenias) with a poor
outcome family histories of psychosis were rarely found, but examination of
twins suggested a psychosocial origin for the disorder. In cycloid
psychoses with a benign outcome family histories of psychosis were also
seldom found. Only by diagnostic separations can the discrepancies in the
field of schizophrenia be solved.