Auto-sensuousness as a basis for classification of psychogenic childhood psychosis

SITUATIONS PREDISPOSING TO PSYCHOGENIC CHILDHOOD PSYCHOSIS

In many psychotic children in whom psychogenic factors seem most operative, the bodily hurt they try to avoid is delusory. As we have seen, awareness of bodily separateness, in a situation in which mother and child were so close as to feel part of each other, can be experienced as the loss of part of the body, which leaves a ‘hole’ or a ‘wound’. This is a delusion because most children have had no actual bodily damage.