[The British and French systems of classification and psychiatric disorders]

We compare the french diagnostic system with that used in Great-Britain. The criteria are very similar except in the case of the non-affective functional psychoses. The French divide these into acute and chronic. Bouffée délirante, the prototype of the acute functional psychoses, is not diagnosed in Great-Britain. The British divide these psychoses into schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic disorders, particularly using Schneiderian criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia. Curiously, it is precisely these criteria, referred to as "automatisme mental" (Clérambault) which are used in France in order to diagnose the "chronic hallucinatory psychoses". This is a diagnosis which is unknown in Great-Britain, and which is in France classed firmly among the non-schizophrenic psychoses, truly a paradoxical situation.