The history of negative symptoms of schizophrenia, also known as fundamental Bleulerian, Type 2 and deficit symptoms, is nearly as old as the concept of schizophrenia itself.Negative symptoms include alogia, flattened affect, anhedonia, asociality, avolition/apathy and attentional impairment. These symptoms can be assessed using various scales, such as the Andreasen's Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), the Positive and Negative Symptom scale (PANSS), and the Negative Symptom Rating Scale (NSRS). The differential diagnosis of negative symptoms requires exclusion of akinesia secondary to antipsychotic-induced extrapyramidal effects, and depression.The issue of whether and to what extent negative symptoms of schizophrenia respond to traditional antipsychotic agents remains a controversial one. The atypical antipsychotic, clozapine, appears to be an important agent in the treatment of negative symptoms, and initial data on several newly developed drugs suggest that they may prove to be useful. Psychological treatments are also a promising avenue for future research.