On a disturbance of affectivity in schizophrenic adolescents: implications for affect theory

As recently as 1969 Loeb stated, "Not only has adolescent schizophrenia been largely ignored by the clinician and research worker but until recent years the entire subject of adolescence had received scant attention" (p. 462). Since that time, a number of investigators have attended to similarities and differences between the schizophrenic syndrome, as a whole, and schizophrenia as it appears in adolescence. One of the findings that has been alluded to by some authors concerns the notion that affect is less severely disturbed, especially in the dimension of affective responsiveness, in adolescent schizophrenics (Sands, 1956). Observations by the author and others suggest that greater attention be paid to the variety of affectivity to delineate this area of symptomatology, which both Kraepelin and Bleuler considered so fundamental and typical in their designations of dementia praecox and schizophrenia. Indeed the purpose of this study concerns the description and dynamic understanding of a typical disturbance of affectivity in adolescent schizophrenics. This disturbance is characterized by a quality of affective communication in which the patient relates to the people around him in a superficial, socially acceptable, receptionist-like manner which induces in the observer the impression that the individual's genuine feelings are not prominent. For want of a better term, we may designate this affective state "airline-hostess affectivity" (A.H.A.). The disturbance is not exclusive to adolescent schizophrenics but can also be observed in young adults too before a phase of chronic adaptation to the schizophrenic process.