Regarding hallucination and reality: the psychosis in ICD-10, DSM-IV-TR, and DSM-V and the psychoanalytic counterpoint

Abstract

Psychosis is one of the few terms in classical psychopathology and psychoanalysis that remain in the current classification systems, such as the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and the ICD (International Classification of Diseases), which allows to investigate the various ways of thinking about psychological distress. We discuss how the DSM-IV-TR, its current edition (DSM-V), and the ICD-10 define and use the term psychosis. The appropriation of this concept is based on a merely descriptive definition, as a refusal strategy towards etiological discussion. Hallucination, one of the criteria for the classification of “psychotic disorders”, is defined with a naive realism in which reality is taken as an objective construction. We present the psychoanalytic counterpoint to such appropriation: psychoanalysis points to the relevance of the symbolic structuring of perceptual phenomena and reality as a subjective construction.