PROBLEM
Higgins and Peterson(*), in a recent review article considering the utility of the process-reactive concept of schizophrenic behavior, suggest that there is little evidence to distinguish this concept from "severity of illness". They are critical of many studies which indicate that procem schizophrenics perform more poorly than reactive since this would be expected of more "severely illJJ, or more "inadequate", patients. One of the implications s e e m to be that poor performance is likely a function of incapacitating symptoms such as non-attending to the task.
However, a severe limitation of this argument is that these authors are not clear in their use of the terminology "severity of illness". Strain") reported that if one is referring to current severity of behavioral symptoms, there is certainly a distinction to be made between severity and the process-reactive concept. He found that the performance of "more severe" reactive schizophrenics was worse on a concept-formation task than "less severe" process schizophrenics. Severity was a measure of current behavior while process-reactive position was a measure of more extended functioning of the patient. His results appear inconsistent with the attempt to equate the process-reactive concept with that of "severity of illness".
I n the present study, an attempt is made to clarify further the distinction be-SUMMARY Some authors have considered "severity of illness" synonymous with the process-reactive concept in schizophrenia. One hundred-eight Ss diagnosed as schizophrenic were rated on scales for high and low symptom severity and process-reactive position to determine if these two concepts overlap significantly. There was no significant relationship between the two sets of scores. Process-reactive position was highly related to length of hospitalization ( P < .OOl) while there was no relationship between symptom severity and length of hospitalization. It was concluded that there is little evidence supporting the contention that these two concepts are identical.