Glossary / Lexicon

Eugen Bleuler first coined the divisive term "schizophrenia" in 1911. Bleuler defined schizophrenia with his four "A's", referring to the: 1. blunted Affect (diminished emotional response to stimuli) ;. 2. loosening of Associations (by which he meant a disordered pattern of thought, inferring a cognitive deficit);. 3. Ambivalence (an apparent inability to make decisions, again suggesting a deficit of the integration and processing of incident and retrieved information) and 4. Autism (a loss of awareness of external events, and a preoccupation with the self and one's own thoughts).