A case of non-processual and primarily non-productive schizophrenia is presented. However, its evolutive development and clinical manifestations of <<self>> experiences alterations are prototypic of the picture they represent. Nevertheless, this case was not diagnosed during more than one decade of observation. The presentation of this patient's case history shows how clinical praxis dissociates the theory of schizophrenia from the patient's experience. The discussion elaborated from the conceptual history and the self in schizophrenia suggests that the subjective phenomena manifested in these patients cannot be approached by the present applicable operatives criteria in psychiatry nor from a unifying criterion based on an exclusive nuclear approach that aims to explain the final cause. All of this refers to the insufficiency of psychopathology as mere semiology and raises the need for a psychopathological praxis that can implement the results of the theory.