| Abstract: | Cataphasia, one form of Leonard's unsystematic schizophrenias, shows a polymorphous, but nevertheless specific symptomatology. The key features of the psychopathology of this condition are formal thought and speech disorders. Hallucinations and delusional ideas can be present, but they are incidental and do not determine the syndrome. The characteristic elements of this thought disorder are logical derailment, paralogic thinking and, especially in the excited form, incoherence with contaminations up to "word salad". The speech shows strange verbalizations, paragrammatisms, agrammatisms, and occasionally neologisms. The course mostly fluctuates with acute attacks and incomplete remissions leading to residual states of varying degrees of severity determined by a flattened and somewhat euphoric affect. Usually the disorder appears in an excited or inhibited form. In the latter case, thought disorder is difficult to recognize. Sometimes it can only be stated by the facial expression, which reveals an internal emptiness and dullness, and a tendency to state fixedly at the examiner. Psychopharmacotherapy can diminish accompanying delusional ideas or hallucinations, but does not have much influences on the core syndrome of formal thought and speech disorder. |
