ABSTRACT
S. Freud hoped that by using the same methodology as had been so successful in dreams and symptoms, he might penetrate the depths of psychosis. This chapter discusses the history of the psychoanalytic approach to psychosis and in the course of this have given considerable space to Freud that provided both the framework for understanding psychosis and the basis of a psychoanalytic attitude to disturbed states of mind. However bizarre the contents of a psychosis, they have a natural connection to quite ordinary human preoccupations, a connection that, of course, may not be obvious. In psychiatric diagnosis the distinction between personality disorder and mental illness is helpful for a general appreciation of the patient's difficulties and for the making of rational plans for management. However, for a psychoanalyst, reasons/meanings and causes are completely intertwined, inseparable. The relation of the abnormal to the normal in psychoanalysis is at once more complex and more problematic.
