Symptoms of schizotypal personality disorder.

The authors examined the symptoms of 35 patients with schizotypal personality disorder. In contrast to the suggestion, based on studies of nonclinical, familial samples, that patients with schizotypal disorder are best characterized by the negative symptoms of social isolation and impaired functioning, they found that the positive symptoms of odd communication, ideas of reference, magical thinking, and illusions were equally valid discriminators of their clinically based group of patients. The findings argue against the idea that schizotypal personality disorder be redefined in the revision of DSM-III (DSM-III-R) to emphasize negative symptoms and suggest that clinical samples of schizotypal patients may differ from familial samples.