Lecture 36

Abstract

You will recall how strongly I have always emphasized that our clinical knowledge of the psychoses is still very incomplete. You must also bear in mind that the cases I present exemplify most of the more frequent types of illness; yet, taken together they do not constitute the majority of the main types. In other words, the more complicated and therefore less familiar cases predominate in number. The principle that has guided me in this selection is well known, and readily understood, namely to serve teaching purposes. Thus, you had to be shown simple cases, composed of a few elementary symptoms, where we could gain as full an understanding as possible. For us, they form the foundation of a theory of illness, to which we must refer continually in order to understand more complex cases. In this sense we could designate types of illness considered so far as fundamental forms of psychosis. It is not my intention now to attempt to describe just those cases which extend beyond the simpler situations: However, I cannot neglect a few brief comments on the perspective you will have to use in evaluating those cases which predominate in practice. Obviously, we should not attempt to force them artificially into some kind of schema, even if it be one like ours, which has been tried and tested. Nevertheless, our scheme does so much to help analyze presenting symptoms in these complex cases.