Pseudoneurotic Schizophrenia:  Psychological Test Findings

THE diagnostic category pseudoneurotic schizophrenia is a relatively new psychiatric description. Perhaps for this reason alone its application seems to produce confusion and misunderstanding, if not outright rejection. Although the symptom complex is amply and even brilliantly elucidated by Hoch and his coworkers,¹ practical means of identification and differentiation remain to be delineated. Psychological test data which offer an operational framework for viewing the dynamic and defensive structure of this syndrome have not yet been exploited for their very pertinent and explicit contribution.

The focus of psychiatric investigation has changed over the years as the field has expanded and provided facilities for treating a broader segment of the population. Formerly mental illness was considered a condition of relatively chronic incapacitation and deterioration. In recent years the emphasis has shifted to a recognition of pathological but stabilized individuals who suffer either periodic breakdown or manifest circumscribed areas of dysfunction. One