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The title of this communication may be misleading, since in reality there is not just one but many problems related to latent psychosis. Moreover, it should be pointed out from the very outset that what is meant by latent psychosis is by no means a merely dialectical psychotic potentiality of every individual. According to such a definition we are all virtual psychotics just as we are all potential criminals.
On the contrary, we deal with a clinical reality. Bleuler (1, p. 239) spoke of latent schizophrenia as:
The most frequent form, although admittedly these people hardly ever come for treatment. … In this form we can see in nuce all the symptoms and all the combinations which are present in the manifest types of the disease. Irritable, odd, moody, withdrawn or exaggeratedly punctual people arouse among other things, the suspicion of being schizophrenic. Often one discovers concealed catatonic or paranoid symptoms, and exacerbations occurring in later life demonstrate that every form of this disease may take a latent course.
As to the disposition for a depressive psychosis, it has been even less sharply defined by descriptive psychiatry.
A comparison of these early concepts with our present ideas shows a line of development based on the ever wider use of tools provided by psychoanalysis. It was especially the progress of our knowledge of the ego with the development of such concepts as ego strength and ego weakness and the relative resilience of its defensive measures that helped us to understand the dynamics of