Emotions and Schizophrenia

The present work sets the ambitious goal of shedding more light on unexplored affective mechanisms of endogenous psychoses. The emphasis is on the dimensional approach, which considers affective (manic-depressive) and ineffective (schizophrenic) psychoses in a single continuum of emotional over-activation, and the differences between them - quantitative rather than qualitative (categorical). Based on original experimental studies compared with literature data, a fundamentally new integrative concept of the affective mechanisms of both psychotic symptomatology and the drug and psychological antipsychotic therapy is justified.

In this study are used empirical facts and ideas from different fields of knowledge such as: psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, phenomenology, psychopathology, cognitive-neuroscience, philosophy, history of psychiatry, psychophysiology, neurophysiology, neurochemistry and psychopharmacology. The clinical and theoretical significance of the presented new facts and their interpretation are analyzed.