ABSTRACT
The term “schizotypal” was first used by Rado in the 1950s in a paper delivered to the New York Academy of Medicine. This concept was later defined and expanded by Rado (1953) in an address to the American Psychiatric Association. He differentiated the theory of a “genotype,” or the inherited cause of a disorder, from that of the “phenotype,” the expressed outcome. He abbreviated the term “schizophrenic phenotype” to “schizotype.” Rado theorized that regardless of the psychosis expression, there often are underlying traits present in many patients for their life span, beginning even in childhood. He defined the “schizotypal organization” as the psychodynamic traits characteristic of the schizotype.
