Psychosis & Schizophrenia

I. Psychosis: a disturbed psychological state in which one loses touch with reality, may have false beliefs about what is taking place or who one is (delusions), and may see, hear, smell, taste, and/or feel things that are not present (hallucinations). II. Schizophrenia: a chronic psychotic disorder characterized by disturbed behavior, thinking, emotions, and perceptions.

A. Positive Symptoms: involve a break with reality, as represented by the appearance of hallucinations and delusional thinking. Paranoia is often the driving emotional experience behind the hallucinations and delusions. B. Negative Symptoms: affect the person’s ability to function in daily life and include such features as lack of emotions or emotional expression, loss of motivation, loss of pleasure in normally pleasant activities, social withdrawal or isolation, and limited output of speech.

C. Delusions 1) Delusions of Persecution 2) Delusions of Reference 3) Delusions of Being Controlled 4) Delusions of Grandeur D. Hallucinations: sensory perceptions occurring in the absence of external stimuli that become confused with reality. 1) Auditory hallucinations (“hearing voices”) are most common, affecting about three out of four schizophrenia patients. a) Command hallucinations: voices that instruct schizophrenics to perform certain acts, such as harming themselves or others. 2) Visual hallucinations (seeing things that are not there, such as other people, demons, spirits, animals, aliens, objects, etc.).

E. Loss of Ego Boundaries Schizophrenics may fail to recognize themselves as unique individuals and be unclear about how much of what they experience is part of themselves. F. Prevalence of Schizophrenia Schizophrenia affects about 1% of the U.S. population.   It is essentially equally common among men and women. The peak age at which psychotic symptoms first appear is in the early to middle 20s for men and the late 20s for women.

III. Common Causes of Schizophrenia A. Brain Abnormalities Brain scans of schizophrenia patients show abnormalities both in the physical structures of the brain and in brain functioning. 1) The Dopamine Hypothesis: schizophrenia involves an over reactivity of dopamine transmission in the brain. The most prominent finding of structural abnormalities is loss of brain tissue (gray matter). B. Genetic Factors

IV. Treatment of Schizophrenia C. Environmental Factors 1) Schizophrenogenic Mother: an outdated term for a mother or a mother figure of a schizophrenic, generally described as cold, rejecting, emotionally disturbed, perfectionist, domineering, lacking in sensitivity, overprotective, encouraging dependence and who is not capable of drawing a clear boundary between herself and her child or of differentiating between her own needs and emotions and those of her child. 2) Introjection: an unconscious psychological process by which a person incorporates into his or her own personality the characteristics of another person. IV. Treatment of Schizophrenia Antipsychotic drugs block dopamine receptors in the brain, which reduces dopamine activity in the brain and helps quell the more obvious symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions.

V. Other Psychological Forces Driving Alternative Behaviors A. Psychological Reactance: whenever free choice is limited or threatened, the need to retain one’s freedoms makes a person want free choice significantly more than before. Psychological reactance is aroused whenever a person is told that they are not allowed to have something, participate in some activity, behave a certain way, etc. When pushed, people tend to push back. B. The Shadow: Carl Jung’s term for the opposite aspects of one's personality. It is typically negative as it represents the collection of traits we have repressed to avoid destructive clashes with our surrounding environment. Therefore, its emergence from the unconscious often leads to unfortunate consequences.