Schizotypal Personality Disorder: An Operational Definition of Bleuler's Latent Schizophrenia?

Abstract

In spite of the pressure for consensus that operational diagnoses exert, there remains considerable disagreement concerning the marginal syndromes which may be subtypes of schizophrenia or phenomenologically or genetically related. Some clarification of the question may result by returning to Bleuler's “latent schizophrenia,” which he observed in the relatives of schizophrenics. Schizotypal personality disorder of DSM-III is only a first approximation to this, and its deficits in this respect are discussed briefly.