“Semantic void” of some of psychiatric terms used in the diagnosis of schizophrenia

Abstract

The article is devoted to an analysis of the terminology used to support a psychiatric diagnosis. Using linguistic approaches, the author draws attention to the presence in psychiatry of semantically filled and semantically empty terms that denote certain psychopathological symptoms/signs. It is concluded that for a number of terms used in the diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, a revision should be revised and those that are vague, ambiguous, not included in international diagnostic systems and recognised as archaic should be removed from the psychiatric lexicon. In particular, we are talking about symptoms such as emasculation of emotions, pretentiousness, paradoxicality, eccentricity, ambivalence.