[Erwin Stransky and intrapsychic ataxy]

The eventful beginnings of the concept of schizophrenia are not widely known in France. Most of the relevant texts are German in origin and French readers have access to very few of them. Yet the concept of schizophrenia has largely been adopted; everything that can contribute to the understanding of its elaboration is of importance. This elaboration did not take the form of a series of brilliant ideas from Kahlbaum, Kraepelin and Bleuler but rather the synthesis by these authors of the theories of their time - theories generally unknown to the French public. One such is the theory of intrapsychical incoordination, propounded by the prolific and interesting Viennese, Erwin Stransky, well known in German-speaking countries but not in France. He was, in 1903, the first to emphasize the importance of inaffectivity in dementia praecox. He devised an explanatory model of this disease, indicating its origin as the variable alteration of the relationship between what he termed thymo and noopsyche. Stransky was the first to speak of intrapsychical ataxy, his model offers an explanation for spectacular remissions from dementia praecox and for pseudo-lucidity. Intrapsychical ataxy, according to the model, is of diagnostic value, allowing a distinction to be made between the paralogies and "wordsalads" of hysterics (only thymopsychic) and those of dementia praecox (only noopsychic).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)