ABSTRACT
Although a well-established distinction between neurosis and psychosis is found even in Freud's earliest texts — for example, in his correspondence with Fliess — psychoanalysis has not developed as complex or extensive a system of classification of mental disorders as has psychiatry. This is because its interests have been narrower and directed principally towards the distinction between the clinical structures of the perversions, the neuroses and the psychoses.
Within … [the psychoses] psycho-analysis has tried to define different structures: on the one hand, paranoia (including, in a rather general way, delusional conditions) and schizophrenia; on the other, melancholia and mania. Fundamentally, psycho-analysis sees the common denominator of the psychoses as lying in a primary disturbance of the libidinal relation to reality; the majority of manifest symptoms, and particularly delusional construction, are accordingly treated as secondary attempts to restore the link with objects.
(Laplanche and Pontalis 1980: 370)