Schizophrenic neologism versus aphasic neologism: characteristics in writings of Japanese schizophrenic patients.

Three cases of schizophrenia with ideographic neologisms in Japanese are presented and compared with aphasic neologisms reported in Japanese literature. Schizophrenic neologisms are different from aphasic neologisms in nature. The contrast becomes obvious when both are compared in Japanese writing based on the dual writing system of kanji (Chinese characters, ideogram) and kana (phonetic characters, syllabogram).