The Concept of Negative Symptoms

Abstract

In a recent edition of the Schizophrenia Bulletin devoted to negative symptoms, the editor suggested at the beginning of his preface that what he called the “positive–negative symptom distinction” had been introduced into psychiatry only a decade previously (Levine, 1985). Many authors in the same volume seemed to agree with him; at least they did not emphasise any continuity with earlier work. There were a few notable exceptions. Since, for more than 30 years, I have seen the relationship between psychological deficit (cognitive defect, negative syndrome) and the productive (florid, positive) symptoms as lying at the heart of the mystery of schizophrenia, it seemed possible that some account of how that interest arose and developed might still be timely. This is part of the history of the Social Psychiatry Research Unit of the Medical Research Council.