The stepladder to the impossible: A first hand phenomenological account of a schizoaffective psychotic crisis

Abstract

A developmentally oriented commentary on the writer's own 1979 psychotic crisis is presented. In the writer's own case psychosis eventually encroached after real persecution, severe life stress and enhanced arousal and was prompted by an ascription of high distinctiveness to self and a low distinctiveness to others. The impact of coincidences generated and confirmed an interpretation of an externallocus of control. Abnormality (‘illness’) was reflected in a massive escalation of confirmation blas. It is argued that psychosis has its own intrinsic motivation; that life events must be understood in a developmental context; that cognitive factors, often critical, can sometimes be tied to emotional determinants and that gross damage to the self concept, with consequences for spiritual life, plays a causal role in psychosis. A genetic fragility, which biases ongoing emotional and cognitive life, is nonetheless strongly indicated.