SEVERE MENTAL-DISORDERS AND DISTORTED REALITY

This paper revisits, from a relational viewpoint, the concept of ideal ization. The context is that of therapy with families with an adolesce nt or young adult affected by a severe mental disorder. We examine one possible familial risk factor: a shared distortion of reality, the ph enomenon by which not only the patient but often several other family members misperceive the psychological equilibrium or affective involve ment of one or more members of the family. Our attention to this risk factor extends to a wider hypothesis, one that sees the familial facto rs co-responsible for severe mental disorders in terms of the transmis sion of relational suffering in a three-generational process.