[Prodromal symptoms in schizophrenia]

This review deals with the opinions and findings of the last six decades regarding occurrence, frequence, and phenomenology of precursor stages of schizophrenic and schizoaffective psychoses. Already in his classical delineation of the onset of schizophrenia Mayer-Gross (1932) differentiated between uncharacteristic and characteristic precursors of schizophrenia and anticipated essential aspects of the concept of basic stages and basic symptoms which has been gradually developed by clinical psychiatrists and psychologists since the 50s. In his monograph "The beginning schizophrenia" Conrad (1958) resumed the "promisingly undertaken, but prematurely coming to a standstill" work of the descriptive-phenomenological psychopathology of the Heidelberg School (Jaspers, K. Schneider, Mayer-Gross, Gruhle) and investigated systematically early abnormalities of behaviour with the method of morpho-analysis. However, the study of Conrad refers already to the onset of the first psychotic episode, the "trema" which is not identical with the outpost syndromes and prodromes in the sense of Mayer-Gross and the authors of the basic symptom concept. The "trema" is characterized mainly by disorders of behaviour and expression, the precursor syndromes by dynamic and cognitive basic deficiencies, experiential and not behavioural in kind, typically only recognizable by the self-reports of the patients. The ability of recognition and realization of the basic symptoms as complaints and disorders and to develop coping strategies was the presupposition for a standardized survey and assessment of basic symptoms in the Frankfurt Questionnaire (FBF) and the Bonn Schedule for the Assessment of Basic Symptoms (BSABS).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)