ABSTRACT
As Editor, I should like to pick out the ideas in Redfearris paper that have strongly influenced me since I first heard it in 1977.
Psychosis involves a distortion in the relation to the Other who tends to get used as a dumping ground.
The self always contains a body-self. But in psychosis, particularly, the physical pole of the psyche-soma spectrum is activated (or suppressed). This needs to be taken into account in therapy.
When considering who or what might function as a transforming container for psychotic process, one should not be too idealistic; many improvised solutions can do this.
At the level of the primal relationship, simple and straightforward affect is translated into something far more primitive and explosive.
‘214Affective psychoses represent premature attempts to attain whole-person feelings.’ This preserves a prospective or teleological function for psychosis.
There is something that can be called ‘pseudo-health’. This is based on an unrelated projection of bad stuff rather than achieved via ‘suffering and transformation’. Though noticeable in psychotics, this can also be seen in non-psychotic persons.
It is worth adding that there is still no residential centre in Britain of the kind wished for by Redfearn.A.S.
