Concept
Psychosis
Overview
In psychopathology, psychosis ( ) is the inability to distinguish what is or is not real. Examples of psychotic symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized or incoherent thoughts or speech. Psychosis is a description of a person's state or symptoms, rather than a specific mental illness, and it is not related to the personality construct of psychopathy.
Common causes of chronic psychosis include schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and brain damage (usually as a result of alcoholism). Acute psychosis can also be caused by severe distress, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, some medications, and drug use and withdrawal (including alcohol, cannabis, hallucinogens, and stimulants). Acute psychosis is termed primary if it results from a psychiatric condition and secondary if it is caused by another medical condition or drugs. The diagnosis of a mental-health condition requires excluding other potential causes. Tests can be administered to check whether psychosis is caused by central nervous system diseases, toxins, or other health problems.
Treatment may include antipsychotic medication, psychotherapy, and social support. Early treatment appears to improve outcomes. Medications appear to have a moderate effect. Outcomes depend on the underlying cause.
Psychosis is not well-understood at the neurological level, but dopamine (along with other neurotransmitters) is known to play an important role. In the United States about 3% of people develop psychosis at some point in their lives. Psychosis has been described as early as the 4th century BCE by Hippocrates and possibly as early as 1500 BCE in the Ebers Papyrus.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Psychosis is discussed.
This psychosis, unintelligible as it was in its time, was revealed ten years later through hypnotic analysis. The fact to which I call attention is this: That the content of such an hallucinatory psychosis consists in directly bringing into prominence that idea which was threatened by the motive of the disease. One is therefore justified in saying that through its flight into the psychosis the ego defended the…
Sigmund Freud, Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
states what it is; names the idea
111), reveals with the greatest clearness the wish fulfilment as a characteristic of the imagination, common to the dream and the psychosis. (My own investigations have taught me that here the key to a psychological theory of the dream and of the psychosis is to be found.)
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
states what it is; names the idea
Every mature art possesses a host of conventions as a basis: in so far as it is a language. Convention is a condition of great art, _not_ an obstacle to it.... Every elevation of life likewise elevates the power of communication, as also the understanding of man. _The power of living in other people's souls_ originally had nothing to do with morality, but with a physiological irritability of suggestion: "sympathy,"…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power
states what it is; author linked in the graph
"It must be somebody's fault that I feel bad"--this kind of reasoning is peculiar to all invalids, and is but the more pronounced, the more ignorant they remain of the real cause of their feeling bad, the physiological cause (the cause may lie in a disease of the _nervus sympathicus_, or in an excessive secretion of bile, or in a want of sulphate and phosphate of potash in the blood, or in pressure in the bowels…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
author linked in the graph
It all goes back to what we said in another connection only a few pages ago (p. 233). As the total neurosis changes, so does the total psychosis change. But as the changes of neurosis are never absolutely discontinuous, so must the successive psychoses shade gradually into each other, although their _rate_ of change may be much faster at one moment than at the next. * * * * * This difference in the rate of change…
William James, The Principles of Psychology, Volume 1
names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Psychosis
Related ideas
- Epilepsy
- Jesus
- Norm (philosophy)
- Hippocrates
- India
- Ancient Greek
- Personality
- Muslims
- Aphasia
- Nobel Prize
- New Testament
- Nervous system
- Psychotherapy
- Sigmund Freud
- Schizophrenia
- Cold War
- Karl Jaspers
- Cambodia
- United States
- Broca's area
- Anterior cingulate cortex
- Reality
- Dopamine
- Hallucination
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Consciousness.