WHILE there have been many experimental studies of the cognitive disturbances in schizophrenia, the affective disturbances have been more resistant to systematic investigation. Indeed, schizophrenia is often described as a thinking disorder. This is an oversimplification, however, in which the affective disturbances that are present in schizophrenia and the lack of harmony between feeling and thinking are neglected.
Inappropriate affect, generally asserted to be a cardinal symptom of schizophrenia, has been described in a number of different ways. Some authors refer to the inappropriateness of the affective message in an interpersonal context, some emphasize the lack of congruence between the verbal and nonverbal aspects of the message, and others stress the disharmony among the various components of the nonverbal expression.1-4 Our search of the literature failed to uncover work specifically directed toward the experimental verification of the affective disturbances in schizophrenia reported