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S. Nacht et P.C. Racamier. The Psycho-analytic theory of delirium.
Delirium, like neurosis, is the solution to psychic conflict. The distinction psychosis-neurosis is at the heart of psycho-analytic research. Criterion of transference is out-dated. Definition of psychotic anxiety. The heuristic importance of the primordial state of delirium, and of its history. The concept of projection is central. The content of the delirium is less important than its function in this presentation: this demands a detailed study of the functions of the ego of greater depth than that required for the neuroses.
Psychiatric research was not only descriptive and structural. Psycho-dynamic and psycho-genetic studies preceded psycho-analytic work along with ideas on the creative function, defence, and significance of delirium. But the organo-genetic position still allows nothing but an interpretation of content for psycho-analytic explanation.
For Freud at the onset, delirium was a defence against the loss of reality (1894). According to his work inspired by the homosexual conceptions of persecution delirium (Schreber) the aggressive factor takes first place, from Brunswick to M. Klein, who gives it an all-important rôle. It was Tausk who first pointed out the narcissistic essence of delirium and introduced the study of the primary states of the ego. From a wide survey of modern works, we refer to the critical analysis of the conception of the ego and the psychoses by Federn, the psychotic transference (Fromm-Reichmann), and the traumatic primitive reality (Séchehaye, Rosen). For the authors as for I. Macalpine and R. Hunter, the 'primum movens' is pre-objectal.
Multiple functions of delirium. Basically, solution of conflict. The primordial state is the most significant psycho-pathologically. Language coded as in a dream, the delirium camouflages the pre-oedipal or oedipal conflict.
The deterioration of the sense of truth