Continental viewpoints on the concept of reactive psychoses

Although the Scandinavian concept of reactive psychoses relates to K. Jaspers and although Kretschmer described the prototype of a psychosis of psychogenic/reactive origin (Der sensitive Beziehungswahn), the concept is not so commonly used in German-speaking countries. Important reasons for this refusal may be (1) the sharp distinction between psychosis (which may be explained but not understood) and understandable reactions, which was stressed in rather influential German psychiatric schools in the middle of the century, and (2) the aim of stressing psychological understanding in a broad spectrum of psychiatric illnesses in the Swiss tradition, where the demarcation of particular reactive psychoses seemed to be superfluous. The development of modern concepts stressing the multidimensionality in the etiology of the main groups of psychiatric disorders was certainly influenced by the concept of reactive psychoses but passed it.