[Structure of the paraphrenic syndrome in the clinical picture of paranoid schizophrenia].

Seventy-one patients with paranoid schizophrenia were examined to study the pattern and distinctive psychopathological features of the paraphrenic syndrome which developed following the paranoiac, paranoid and hallucinational-paranoid syndromes. Transformation of the paranoiac syndrome into the paraphrenic one was of a gradual nature, with delusional perception in a reduced variant comprising the phenomenological structure of delusion. The interpretative mechanism of delusional ideas remained constant. The transformation of the paranoid syndrome into the paraphrenic one was attended by a further extension of the syndrome of psychic automatisms. Ideas of grandeur were rather unstable and made up of delusional notions. The fact that the paraphrenic syndrome in this particular case is characterized by numerous psychopathological phenomena is shown to indicate a favourable course of disease. The idea of grandeur evolved in the context of verbal hallucinosis often transformed the hallucinational-paranoid syndrome into the paraphrenic one. This time course of delusional syndromes was characteristic of an unfavourable course of disease.