Theory and Psychopathology

Psychotic ideation is bolstered by its characteristics of visceral experience, dissociation and lack of context. Rogerian theory and therapy might be a promising intervention.

Often dealing with stigma by the mentally ill involves expectations for other, non-mentally ill people to change. This article examines practical steps to overcome stigma.

The context of schizophrenics, in terms of a vocational and relational roles, is typically misunderstood. Combating stigma by understanding of their perspectives is essential.

The biopsychosocial paradigm as it relates to the cycles that exacerbate mental disorders, including those which can be treated with medication, socialization and psychotherapy.

Common sense, reasoning and emotional intelligence are qualities often diminished in the psychotic mentally ill. The clinician may augment these through psychotherapy.

Psychosis is characterized by the symptom of dissociation from reality by the psychotic individual. This withdrawal involves derealization and depersonalization.

The team approach to treatment of psychotic individuals is widely used. This writer supports the possibility of a single clinician who might oversee the various aspects of treatment for the mentally ill, with a strong focus on utilizing an examination of the client's history of premorbid functioning in terms of finding for her a vocational and relational niche.

Why do schizophrenics discontinue their medications? Often, this is done for delusional reasons, based on the fact that meds are only partially effective. Incomplete effectiveness of medication and the punitive aspects of psychosis allow for confusion regarding the causes of psychosis, further motivated by desperation of the schizophrenic to find relief.

This article utilizes an example regarding the concrete existence of "apples" and "oranges" as compared to the concept of "fruit". Psychosis, like apples and oranges, has a visceral and immediate quality, and the actuality of brain chemistry regarding psychosis is a metatheory that subsumes the "theories" of psychotic individuals.

For the psychotic individual to be understood, empathy regarding his emotional experience might make a significant difference in his psychopathology and his relationship with the world. It is possible to understand his emotion and his fear, his cognition—to an extent—and his obvious alienation. Ways to address this individual in therapy are discussed in this article.

This article examines the meaning of the idea that "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" in the context of psychotic delusions. Creation of a complex and/or systematized delusional system may lead one into a black hole and a gravitation toward alienation, suffering and perhaps death. The psychotic individual's receipt of self-reflection can be therapeutic.

This article examines the qualities of alienation, introversion and divergent thinking that may typify the individual with schizophrenia. These characteristics can synergistically contribute to poor social judgment as seen in the behavior and choices of that individual. In fact, they may form a triad and a pattern as seen persons with schizophrenia generally.

Freud stated that love and work are the elements of happiness. Finding the right vocational niche, for all people, is important, but especially so regarding the mentally ill. Acceptance of the mentally ill, without stigma, may be an imperative societal goal.

Freud indicated that love and work are the elements of happiness in life. Too often, the mentally ill receive little relational activity that would have a substantial impact on their functioning. This article emphasizes the need to bolster relational skills in mentally ill individuals.

The adolescent who is encouraged and integrated with his peers may not develop schizophrenia.

This article is comprised of an argument that introversion, divergent thinking, and isolation, as qualities in the schizophrenic individual, may be causally related to the emergence of schizophrenia.

This article examines and compares scientific knowledge and how it is obtained to knowledge relying on less well-founded bases and to the pseudo-knowledge maintianed by schizophrenics and paranoid schizophrenics, in particular. The concepts of "association" and "confidence" pertain to that knowledge that we embrace or may seem to be foisted upon us.

This article examines the effects of stigma on the mentally ill, and it elaborates necessary observations about the damaging effects of stigma, pointing to a way of ameliorating the negative consequences of the pathologizing ideation with which non-mentally ill people take toward the mentally ill.

This article explores the effects of emotion on delusional thinking. The term, "defense mechanism", describes delusions of persecution, grandeur or erotomanic delusions, as these manifest themselves in the thinking of the schizophrenic. Ultimately, amelioration of these aspects of schizophrenic thinking can be approached using a biopsychosocial model of mental illness.

This article examines devastion that emerges within the family constellation as a conquence of the schizophrenic diagnosis of one of its family members. It should be noted that the newly diagnosed will experience raging fear and grief as a result of this diagnosis. Both the family and the schizophrenic may view each other as unrecognizable, and this reflects extreme loss.