Psychoses

PSYCHOSES. Under the name of psychoses, some understand all acquired mental diseases in general, while others understand only mental disease-processes that have a definite beginning, development, and outcome. In this latter case, psychoses are contrasted, on the one hand, with psychopathies (see) as congenital defective states (in contrast to processes), underdevelopments of the personality, mainly in the sphere of emotions and instincts, and with oligophrenias (see)—congenital or childhood-acquired underdevelopments, mainly in the sphere of intellect; and on the other hand, with psychoneuroses (see), by which are meant, mainly, short-term outbursts of a psychogenic nature, usually having a goal-oriented intent. However, the establishment of strict boundaries between psychoses and psychopathies, and psychoses and psychoneuroses, is currently carried out by few psychiatrists. On the other hand, Jaspers points out that 'it is hardly possible to make an exact distinction between the type of progressive or regressive (psychopathy) evolution of the personality and a disease-process.' The division of psychoses into exogenous and constitutional also shows that, at the present time, psychoses must be defined not as a product of a cerebral process, but as an interaction between the cerebral process and the entire structure of the personality (Birnbaum). In the same way, as Bumke points out, 'one cannot treat "nervous" and hysterical predispositions and reactions differently from paranoiac or manic-depressive ones,' and the distinction between psychogenic psychoses and psychoneuroses is also erased or finds its resolution in the fact that the very concept of psychoneurosis is identified with the concept of psychogenic psychosis ('Es gibt keine Psychoneurosen mehr' [There are no more psychoneuroses], Bumke). Thus, at the present time, it is more correct to understand by psychosis any acquired mental disease, whereby exogenous and endogenous, somatic and psychogenic, organic and functional [factors] should be considered in the structure of psychosis not as mutually exclusive, but as constitutive moments of psychosis, constructing its origin and development. For individual psychoses, see: Amentia, Alternating psychoses, Arteriosclerotic psychoses, Affective psychoses, Degenerative psychoses, Dementia, Involutional psychoses, Intoxication psychoses, Infectious psychoses, Hysterical psychoses, Catatonia, Klikushestvo (demon possession), Combined psychoses, Constitutional psychoses, Korsakoff's psychosis, Manic-depressive psychosis, Meryachenie (arctic hysteria), Periodic psychoses, Postoperative psychoses (see Postoperative period), Postpartum psychoses (see Postpartum period), Paranoia, Progressive paralysis, Schizophrenia, Traumatic neuroses, Epilepsy.