Paraphrenia is a poorly defined process whose uncertain origins date back to the German psychiatry mid-nineteenth century. Paraphrenia would be a subtype of schizophrenia characterized by a more benign clinical course in terms of volitional and emotional involvement. Certain types of serious sensoperceptive distortions and paranoid symptoms are characteristics of this clinical variant. Despite its diverse presentation, its chronic development and its presence in the daily lives of the patient, the overall functionality is not deeply affected.

To discuss the validity of this and other clinical processes based on classical clinical descriptions for diagnostic approach of our current patients, in contrast to the common use simplified concept (forgetting in ICD-10 or disappeared in American manuals).

Clinical case a middle-aged woman diagnosed with longstanding paranoid schizophrenia who suffered from a highly systemized delusional and hallucinatory syndrome with chronic evolution after a first relapse due to abandonment of treatment, but keeping high functional performance even during phases of partial remission.

Schizophrenia presents multiple symptomatic and prognostic paths. Classical authors named these different subtypes. Revisiting these subtypes could be useful as a complementary tool for predicting clinical outcome based on their descriptions, especially in the absence of reliable material instruments.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.