On Apr. 24, 1908, Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined the term ‘schizophrenia’ at a lecture at a meeting of the German Psychiatric Association in Berlin.

Professor Bleuler argued that dementia praecox was associated with neither dementia nor precociousness, and emphasized that splitting of psychic functioning is an essential feature of schizophrenia.

In 1911, Bleuler wrote “I call dementia precox schizophrenia because, as I hope to show, the splitting of the different psychic functions is one of its most important features. In each case there is a more or less clear splitting of the psychological functions: as the disease becomes distinct, the personality loses its unity”. He recognized that dementia was not a usual characteristic of dementia precox, suggesting the term schizophrenia (splitting of the mind) for the disorder.