ABSTRACT
Individuals with passivity symptoms (“experience of alien control”) report that their actions are no longer under their own control and that their will is replaced by the intentions of another force or agency. Passivity symptoms belong to a larger group of symptoms originally described by the German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider. He identifi ed nine symptom dimensions which he thought had “fi rst-rank” importance for the diagnosis of schizophrenia (Schneider, 1946). These fi rst-rank symptoms have had critical importance as diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia in the 10th revision of the WHO International Classifi cation of Diseases (ICD-10), and the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). In the DSM-5, however, their diagnostic weight has been downgraded due to concerns about their diagnostic utility and specifi city to schizophrenia ( Jablensky, personal communication).
