Neurosis and Psychosis in German and French Nosography

Abstract

Neuroses and psychoses refer to clinical and nosographic problems. The terms psychoses and neuroses have long existed in the nosological vocabulary. Initially, they do not constitute a pair of opposites, they do not exclude themselves, they can overlap. Psychosis corresponds to mental illness, the psychiatric condition [1]. It is the technical concept to replace the term madness. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, psychosis covered both mental disorders of organic origin, for example, “paralytic psychosis” to designate general paralysis, such as functional diseases, ie delusions, as well as some mental disorders, like “obsessive psychosis”, which today could be called neurosis.