Sensoriality and thought. In development and in psychopathology

This paper addresses certain aspects of the role of sensoriality in psychic functioning and, in particular, seeks to compare child sensoriality - a natural component of development that precedes the ability to think - and the perceptual-sensorial distortion that occurs in certain pathological conditions. In the course of severe psychic disorders such as psychosis, and in other respects in post-traumatic conditions, the mind is invaded by sensorial perceptions that block its functioning as an organ of knowledge. In the case of trauma, the intrusive mental phenomena are more limited and related to untransformed traumatic anxiety. Instead, the psychotic transformation of the mind is most radical; it develops into psychic retreat that shatters the ability to think and perceive psychic reality. In this instance, the mind's sensorial mode of functioning is so extreme that these patients are immersed in a newly created sensorial reality; they do not think but rather see their own thoughts or perceive sounds or voices that do not exist.