PSYCHOSIS REVISITED - PSYCHOSIS, DEATH AN D FAMILY

Without denying relevance to previous postulates related to psychosis, the author proposes to view psychosis in the extended context Of the immediate family and its generations. After recalling prior literature on overmortality in psychotic patients, on the role of psychic transm ission from one generation to the other in the genesis of psychosis, a nd on the offsprings of families with psychotic members, the author pr esents the results of her own research : occurrence of psychosis in a family is frequently associated with the death of one or more children among the siblings, and with a tendency towards extinction of the fam ily branch to which the psychotic subject belongs.