ABSTRACT
Sechehaye takes exception to the commonly held notion that schizophrenia dries up the wellsprings of a formerly vibrant life. The psychotic person's alternative world has its own language and grammar. To those who inhabit the world of reality, such verbal productions—dubbed "schizophrenese"—are unintelligible until they crack the psychotic's "self-preserving" code. The loss of differentiation between the schizophrenic's interior world and the outer world of reality, which allows psychotic projections and displacements to morph into the kind of delusions and hallucinations experienced by Renee and Marie, alter not only the content of thought, but its form as well. Because psychotic symptoms can occur with certain electrolyte, endocrine and metabolic derangements, and with the use of some illicit and prescription drugs—all involving real brain "chemical imbalances," and sometimes structural damage to the brain—there is no reason to conclude that all psychotic symptoms are caused in this way.
