Psychiatric Illnesses: Some Inferences from Symptomatology

In an earlier paper (Maxwell, 1972) the difficulties met in a dimensional approach to the description of symptomatology were discussed. In that study a representative sample of patients was considered under the three broad diagnostic categories, neurotics, affective psychotics and schizophrenics, and it was seen that all had a basic core of symptoms of the type generally referred to as ‘neurotic’, which lent themselves fairly well to a dimensional description and which indeed accounted for the greater part of the covariability of the symptoms in all three categories. But in addition the schizophrenics, and to some extent the affective psychotics, showed further symptoms of the type generally referred to as ‘psychotic’, though these occurred in a patchy and less general way than did the ‘neurotic’ symptoms. As a consequence these symptoms were not amenable to a dimensional description, nor did they lead to clear-cut typologies, as Everitt, Gourlay and Kendell (1971) have already shown.