ABSTRACT
S. Freud realised that the classic form of psychoanalysis invented for neurosis, which depended on deciphering symptoms, would not work readily with psychosis because psychotics did not present symptoms to be analysed. Rare analysts, such as Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and Harold Searles, followed Freud's advice and did just that in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and they were remarkably successful in their treatment of psychosis. The listening position of the psychoanalyst becomes the way the patient listens to his or her own mind. Patients will say they wish they could be crazy or psychotic again because of the pain and dread they experience at anticipating what it will take to join the world without the delusion/psychosis. Psychotic patients are at times trying to understand a human experience that envelops all of us but which therapists don't think about much, such as the difference between what happens and what is said about what happens.
