ABSTRACT
In western and Christian history the psychotics were long looked upon as individuals possessed of evil spirits. The handicap to a sounder view of the neurotic and especially of the psychotic arises from the conception that all mental disorders must develop from some material “cause.” The adaptation of the individual to his material and social-cultural environment is always predicated upon the basis of constitutional stability and a certain range of variation. The statistical reports confirm the need of uncovering the cultural and psychological factors which lie behind the final breakdown of the psychotics. The emotional responses of the psychotics, then, are to be defined as aberrant because they are not understood by others. In one sense all psychotics are isolated from their fellows, some in more extreme fashion than others. Certainly, other psychotics reveal other forms of life organization; hence easy generalizations as to type behavior are fraught with difficulties.
