Autism (symptom)
| Autism | |
|---|---|
| Synonym | Bleuler's autism |
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| The picture above illustrates a case of schizophrenic autism. A patient in a world of his own, with fantasies about the transmitted ultrasound and hypnotic warfare. | |
| Classification and external resources | |
| Specialty | psychiatry |
Autism is a fundamental symptom of schizophrenia coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1911. In his opinion, autistic thinking was characterized by desire to avoid unsatisfying reality and then replace it with fantasies with ideas of persecution. Autism is extreme introvertedness, it's the subject's symbolic "inner life" and it is not readily accessible to other people. Predominance of inner fantasies, loss contact with the external reality, distance from others are the main aspects of autism in schizophrenia. In more severe cases a schizophrenic patient withdrew into himself and live a dream. Autistic thinking is independent of logical rules and it is directed by emotional needs. There are various levels of autism, that condition is more severe in people with schizophrenia and in the dream, mild level is then a person have schizoid personality and histrionic persons may have autistic thinking in the daydreams. Autism is also mentioned as a symptom of schizophrenic psychoses in the 9th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD-9), but from the next revision it was removed.
Bleuler’s views on schizophrenia can be summarized by the 4 A's (4 fundamental symptoms): ambivalence, affectivity (inappropriate / incongruent), associations (weak), and autism. It was the basic symptoms that gave schizophrenia its distinctive diagnostic features, in Bleuler's opinion. He wrote a lot of publications on autism and autistic thinking. Autist can use highly illogical material in his statements, and replace logic may clang associations and incidental connections of any ideas. In their struggles, they commonly disregard logic and reality.
Eugène Minkowski (1927) singled out "poor" (autisme pauvre) and "rich" autism (autisme riche). "Poor autism" is characterized by affective deterioration, and "rich autism" is characterized by a richness of mental processes. He also noted that autism is the loss of vital contact with reality (French: »la perte du contact vital avec la réalité«).
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