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Psychosis is a condition. It is also a word which describes a mental disorder. This description, in order to be valid and to assess accurately a person's mental condition, must consider a number of variables, including that person's thought patterns, behavior, and ideation. There is general agreement that inability to test reality and appropriateness of thoughts, perceptions and feelings is psychosis.
During an acute phase of psychosis there are dramatic and jolting symptoms that may be socially, occupationally, intellectually, and emotionally disabling. There is tremendous depth and breadth in the types and severity of symptoms that may be manifested: delusions of all sorts, from the most persecutory fantasy to testaments of grandeur; hallucinatory voices issuing compelling demands or threats; uncontrollable laughing or weeping; disruption of logical thinking; inappropriate speech and thoughts; ritualistic behaviors ranging from the strange to the bizarre; and impulses toward suicide and homicide, though the latter is not so common. These symptom pictures are vivid, extremely dramatic, and obviously disturbing (Harvard Medical School, 1989).
Yet, when we say psychotic or pre-psychotic, are we using the adjective to describe this condition and to indicate tendency in an individual toward this emotional disorder, or are we describing episodic elements in the panorama of an individual's mental health?
Recently, while in the company of some colleagues, I raised the question of language usage to describe this phenomenon of psychosis. I asked whether the word psychotic was an adjective or a noun. Could a person be called a psychotic, analagous to calling