1987/01/01 by G. E. Berrios · 64 citations
Medicine · Psychology · #Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology #Art #Computer science #Gerontology #History #Late 19th century #Library science #Medicine #Period (music) #Psychiatry #Psychology
paper · doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.bmb.a072197
published in British Medical Bulletin 43(3), 484-498 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 1987/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The concept of psychosis, as we know it, dates only from the late 19th century. It was formed out of the remnants of three ancient categories: insanity, alienation and dementia. The following contributory factors are touched upon: the development of the anatomo-clinical concept of disease, the appearance of a language of description in terms of which stable mappings of both overt and covert behaviour could be made, the demands of the new empirical taxonomy, and the incorporation of time as a definitional dimension of disease. The conceptual boundaries of the notion of psychoses were defined in relation to four dichotomies: psychosesneuroses, unitary-multiple, organic-functional and exogenous-endogenous.