Mild Psychosis, the Body and Ordinary Psychosis

Abstract

In this chapter, I discuss body disturbances in mild psychosis related to symptom stabilisation in schizophrenia. First, I outline how contemporary psychiatric nosology has moved away from the notion of mild psychosis. Here I show how clinicians have veered away from using the idea of mild psychosis through the focus on symptom severity coupled with the introduction of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in contemporary psychiatric nosology. Next, I focus specifically on the category of body disturbances in mild psychosis by examining how both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) and the International Classification of Disease, tenth revision (ICD-10) address (or lack) body phenomena in psychosis. These texts help inform the nosological debates in contemporary psychiatry concerning mild psychosis in the context of body phenomena in psychosis. Contemporary psychiatric approaches to body disturbances in schizophrenia are characterised by inconsistency due to the varying significance given to body disturbances in symptomatology. I maintain that the DSM-5 constitutes a reductive conception of psychosis, and that phenomenological approaches linked to the ICD-10 miss the significance of body disturbances to the onset and stabilisation of psychosis. Finally, I introduce contemporary Lacanian approaches to mild psychosis by examining the field of ordinary psychosis.