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Since its earliest descriptions, the concept of childhood schizophrenia has changed considerably. Some contemporary clinicians and researchers have made it so broad as to include a wide range of clinical entities which confuse the picture. The author has attempted, in the light of the most prevalent psychopathological theories, to untangle this confusion, and stress the importance of the psychotic nucleus in childhood schizophrenia. Pseudo-neurotic and borderline cases should be carefully assessed and eliminated, as well as hallucinatory conditions found in many organic syndromes. A strict differential diagnosis respecting the essential psychotic components of schizophrenia should help delineate childhood schizophrenia as a separate clinical entity and afford means of re-evaluating the literature on this subject in a more critical light.

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