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The term dementia præcox is of necessity used here because it has been popularly adopted as a division for classifying people who show certain behavioristic traits, affective trends and physiological symptoms. Through a loose use of its original purpose, the classification of certain psychopathic personalities, dementia præcox has been gradually, indiscreetly accepted as being a definite disease entity and the classification of the personality as a dementia præcox type has become adopted as the diagnosis of a specific disease process. This trick because of the absence of definite etiological factors, has reduced the psychiatrist to the sad plight of having to define what is meant by dementia præcox in terms of the symptoms which he has grouped under the name. This circular method of reasoning from symptoms to name and from name to symptoms, while it satisfies the court's and jury's demand for logic and the custodial psychiatrist's need for short, convenient names in order to pigeon-hole his cases, is diverting the major part of psychiatric curiosity from its task of working out the particular pathology of each individual.
The general lack of confidence and respect by the medical and surgical profession for the psychiatrist is due largely to his psycho-therapeutic inefficiency and circular mode of presenting his cases, characteristically obscuring the unrecognized etiological factors behind the assumption of undefinable, inherent or constitutional defects. The profession's critical attitude is having, however, the effect of forcing the psychiatrist to present his case in terms of its etiological factors or admit that he does not understand it. The necessity for etiological factors has changed the interest in making wholesale, statistical, group studies to more practical, intensive, analytical studies of individual cases. The individual, analytical method is not only clearly revealing many of the psychopathological mechanisms causing the functional psychoses, but, almo