ABSTRACT
Psychosis is an illness of a psychological nature, but it is not psychoneurosis. In some cases it has a physical basis (e.g. arterio-sclerosis). Psychosis can be thought of as a popular term for schizophrenia, for manic depression, and for melancholia with more or less paranoid complication. Psychosis represents an organization of defences, and behind all organized defences there is the threat of confusion, in fact a breakdown of integration. Psychotic illness in a parent often defeats us just because the responsibility lies with the ill persons. It is not always true that there is one healthy parent to carry on, and it may easily be that the healthy parent gets out to save his or her own sanity, even at the cost of leaving a child in the grip of the psychosis of the other parent.
