The Distortion of the Symbolic Process in Neurosis and Psychosis1

I have attempted to explore the implications of a new hypothesis concerning the distinction between normality and psychopathology. In doing so I have artificially segregated into two groups the forces which are at work: those forces which arise primarily through the impact of early emotional stresses on presymbolic stages of human life, and those which arise through a distortion of the symbolic process itself. I have not discussed the first group beyond pointing out that they characterize the psychopathology

both of subverbal animal forms and of preverbel stages of human life, whereas the latter characterizes the psychopathology which is distinctively human, whether of the child, adolescent, or adult. I have presented some evidence for the hypothesis that every unit of symbolic thinking has both an exteroceptive and an enteroceptive root: i.e., that each has a link both in the "I" world and in the "Non-I" world, and that the major distinction between the neurosis and the psychosis depends upon whether the distortion of the relationship of the symbol to what it represents is primarily at the "I" or at the "Non-I" end of the symbolic linkage, respectively. I traced certain consequences of this for that disturbance of psychological function which is called a "hallucination"; and I presented reasons for the generally overlooked fact that under appropriate circumstances certain types of hallucinatory processes fall within the realm of normal psychological functions, while others have neurotic, and still others psychotic implications. The reasons for this are correlated with the underlying thesis.