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This book is a psychoanalytical study on the nature and treatment of the psychotic state, in which Franco De Masi presents his ideas to explain his approach to psychotic patients and to their treatment.
In addition to recent papers published in IJP, longer versions of some of which are included, De Masi presents his thoughts on psychosis in a broader and more articulate dimension. In order to propose an adequate psychoanalytical setting for this difficult pathology, the author investigates psychosis in its naked, essential structure, without the linguistic virtuosities and innumerable psychological and biological overstructures used by other authors to conceal its real and dialectic dimension.
The author adopts an original language which is finely tuned to the phenomenon under investigation. Thanks to this language, the aetiopathogenetic dimension of psychosis—identified by De Masi as a biological susceptibility, closely related to environmental traumas triggered by the lack of emotional empathy, leading to psychoneurobiological reactions—seems not to be a mere access code for understanding this disease. Instead, it provides a series of minimal visual representations that readers can utilize on the basis of their transitional potential. Distancing itself from the coldness of scientific—natural refl ection, this language restores to psychoanalysis its natural science role, redeemed by the provision of meaning. Moreover, it elicits a state of calm, devoid of any guilt feeling in those who read, which can help them accept and downplay the inexplicable and incredible nature of psychotic catastrophes.
Before discussing the content of this book in detail, I would like to make some comments on its title, which allows psychoanalysts to transform the usual question they ask when they see a psychotic patient from: “What are the causes of this disease?' into “What made this disease possible?' The concept of susceptibility was originally