NEGATIVE POSITIVE SYMPTOMS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA - CLINICAL AND CONCEPTUALISSUES

The negative-positive dichotomy of schizophrenic symptoms and syndrome s is the current version of ongoing attempts to subdivide the multifar ious clinical manifestations of schizophrenia into more simple, homoge neous classes. The theoretical background for the negative-positive di stinction in Anglo-Saxon literature is not explicitly formulated, alth ough it rests on a hidden conceptual framework, inspired by metaphysic al evolutionary ideas of the functional organization of the mind, orig inally proposed by Hughlin Jackson. Conceptual aspects and research ev idence of this dichotomy are reviewed. Its validity seems doubtful bot h on conceptual and empirical grounds. The phenomenological approach a nd neural network models are introduced as a possible framework to stu dy schizophrenic symptomatology.