[An ethological model of endogenous psychoses]

Our theory deals with the causality of the endogenous psychoses, considered as a shift of the systems of social behaviour that, in the natural history of our species, are supposed to have controlled the "Social homeostasis": territorial intolerance and dominance hierarchy. The subjective feeling of displacement beyond the boundaries of the group territory would trigger the paranoid syndrome, while the inner experience of an invasion of the own domain would lead to paranoia; hierarchical sudden ascent fits to the maniac syndromes, and the decay of dominance to depression. Intermingled emergence of territorial and ranking vectors allows us to obtain the syndrome profiles of mixed and atypical states with schizomorph and affective components. This causal model gives unity, as well as explanatory and comprehensive principles, to the clinical syndromes formed in the evolution of the endogenous psychoses.