P03-18 - Diagnosis of Psychosis

Abstract

There are two traditional theories about psychosis, Kraeplin's and Freud's. According to Kraeplin it is an idee fixe, which renders fanatics psychotic. This is perceptive but false. According to Freud psychosis is severe neurotisis, and this is refuted by light cases of psychosis (ambulatory) and by severe (certifiable) cases of neurosis. It is admitted in a way when it is admitted that analysis is applicable to neurosis, not as yet to psychosis.

The refusal to admit this situation renders the field pseudo-scientific. It sends researchers to seek cures to an undiagnosed disease.

Yehuda Fried and Joseph Agassi, Paranoia, a Study in Diagnosis, Boston sstudies in teh Philosophy of Science, volume 50, 1976, is systematically ignored even though Fried was a leading Israeli psychiatrist with some international repute. It is time to admit its criticism of received ideas and hopefully also to discuss critically its alternative proposal. The alternative is indebted to both Kraeplin adn Freud but more so to Henri Ey. It is that in addition to what was said before, the important missing characterization of the disease is that psychotics hold peculiar views that they refuse to admit are peculiar. We also claim that this is clearstin paranoia vera, and that the disintegration that Bleuler noted is a late stage of any psychosis, so that at its root all psychosis is paranoia.