ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the common features of the psychological organization of psychotic phenomena. Although the psychoses are a variety of illnesses that have different mental organizations, they have two structural aspects in common: a loss of reality testing and a condensation of reality with fantasy. Psychotic structure tends to locate and process the day residue real object experience quite differently from the day residue sequencing experience. In psychosis, reality testing, reality experience, and emotional experience are all condensed in the psychotic structure. Vertical dissociation is almost always present in delusional structure and it is the major ego-integrative dysfunction of psychotic and near psychotic structure. A core component of psychotic structure, then, is the eruption into reality experience consciousness of a thing presentation. Psychotic structure, thus, may have a crucial nonpsychotic aspect consisting of the character defenses that surround and enable the vertical dissociation of psychotic phenomena. Character themes are both inside and outside the psychotic structure.
