On Sun, 6 Feb 2000 kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> The psychotic condition involves a turning away from reality, brought
> about in two kinds of ways: either by the unconscious repressed
> becoming excessively strong so that it overwhelms the conscious or
> because reality has become so intolerably distressing that the
> threatened ego throws itself into the arms of the unconscious in a
> desperate revolt.
>
Just a note on this: nobody has "psychoses" anymore. It's not in the DSM-IV; it's considered an obsolete term by most practicing clinicians nowadays (kinda like "melancholy" or "hysteria"). If a clinician wants to get reimbursed by HMOs for their work, they do not diagnose a person with a "psychotic condition". --Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends mostly on what you think of psychodynamic theory.
Miles