ABSTRACT
Psychosis is the technical term for what non-psychologists call madness. In contrast to the symptoms of neurosis, psychotic symptoms are categorically outside the normal realm of experience, and as such they are beyond our common-sense powers of understanding and empathy. It is this aspect of psychotic symptoms that isolates persons experiencing them in “a world of their own”. The availability of anti-psychotic drugs means that many sufferers today can obtain significant relief from symptoms. The experiences of persons in the grip of psychotic episodes recorded in centuries past are remarkably similar to the kinds of feelings and ideas described by sufferers. Delusions may present as part of a complex of psychotic phenomena as in schizophrenia, mania, or psychotic depression, or as the lone, predominant psychotic feature of a paranoid psychosis. The delusions associated with the affective psychoses tend to have contents that are congruent with the mood of the patient.
