ABSTRACT
The diagnostic boundaries for schizophrenia have never remained ®xed. Their criteria have been different at different times, in different countries and in different psychiatric cultures. The clinical heterogeneity of schizophrenic patients makes us ask whether it is even justi®able to speak about an illness called `schizophrenia'. Such diagnostic practice certainly has disadvantages for both research, where notably dissimilar patients are placed into the same diagnostic clusters, and for individuals, who continue too often to carry the diagnostic label even after their recovery. Eugen Bleuler (1911), the originator of the name `schizophrenia', himself concluded that schizophrenia is not a uniform disorder but rather a group of disorders including `a nuclear group' with well-known clinical subgroups and `a borderline group' dif®cult to distinguish from neuroses and manicdepressive psychoses. In line with him, we should at least prefer the term `the group of schizophrenic psychoses'.
