ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION From the very outset a century ago, students of schizophrenia have emphasized the neurocognitive and social cognitive deficits that characterize the disorder. Emil Kraepelin named the disease dementia praecox or dementia of the young, defining it in terms of a progressive degeneration in cognitive function. His contemporary, Eugen Bleuler, who renamed the disease schizophrenia, identified autistic alienation as a core element essential for diagnosis. Bleuler’s use of the term autism described a “detachment from outer reality and immersion in inner life”(1), thereby capturing the difficulties displayed by individuals with schizophrenia in engaging in social and interpersonal relationships. A 100 years after Kraepelin and Bleuler, we describe these neuropsychological features of schizophrenia in terms of neurocognitive or neuropsychological deficits and impairments of social cognition.
