ABSTRACT
The various preconditions for the psychotic experience are deduced from three main factors, which are first described in general terms to then assess their special relevance for the psychotic experience. Psychic development can be conceived of as a continual psychic growth process constituted by the gradual differentiation between self and other in one's own experience. Stavros Mentzos described as a characteristic and common feature of the different psychotic disorders the patient's struggle to find a solution to a basic human conflict, to keep a distance from the object and yet, to establish and maintain a contact with it. For Andre Green the deobjectalising function is closely connected with the unbinding of the death drive, which in psychosis seems the only way out from a fusional relationship with the primal object. The manic psychotic patient loses all inhibitions and self-control, and hence desires and urges are acted out regardless of the consequences.
