ABSTRACT
SCHIZO-AFFECTIVE disorder is an overt form of schizophrenia in which features of primary affective disturbance intermingle or alternate with fundamental symptoms of schizophrenic ego impairment. Bleuler (1911, pp. 208–211) included affective disturbances among the accessory symptoms of schizophrenia and described the occurrence in schizophrenia of both melancholic and manic conditions, the former as manifest in depressive affect and inhibition of thought and action and the latter as reflected by euphoria, flights of ideas, and hyperactivity. In regard to differentiating such a mixture of schizophrenic and affective symptomatology from manic-depressive psychosis, Bleuler (1911, p. 304) taught the following:
All the phenomena of manic-depressive psychosis may also appear in our disease; the only decisive factor is the presence or absence of schizophrenic symptoms. Therefore, neither a state of manic exaltation nor a melancholic depression, nor the alternation of both states has any significance for the diagnosis. Only after careful observation may we conclude that we are dealing with a manic-depressive psychosis.
