Definition of "dementia praecox" []

• Schizophrenia. No longer in scientific use. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "MOST psychiatrists state or tacitly assume that dementia praecox is a disease of a steadily progressive nature, where the first symptom of dementia is a signal for relentless degradation of the patient's mental capacity except in the sphere of the more mechanical, intellectual functions."
• "And all gradations from pure paranoia to dementia praecox seem to have corresponding losses in the sense of reality as embodied in delusions."
• "Kraepelin has split off from dementia praecox a separate psychosis -- Paraphrenia systematica -- which he timidly defends as a clinical entity apparently because the course is a long one and the deterioration less marked than in dementia praecox."