[Concept determination and classification of the so-called epileptic psychoses]

Some concepts and classifications of the epileptic psychoses are discussed with special regard to their capacity of being integrated into a multiconditionel view. In epileptics, too, the term of "psychosis" should no longer be connected to the axiom of the somatic origin of the psychic syndrome. The term of "twilight state" should be reserved to those among the epileptic psychoses which go along with troubles of consciousness. The socalled episodic morbid moods of the epileptics are no more merely to be understood as psychoses of somatic origin. They may as well develop as a psychic reaction. If one conceptualizes the psychic troubles of the epileptics as "transient syndrome" (Durchgangssyndrom), as functional psychosis, or as psychosyndrome originating from local or diffuse brain damage, their classification must be limited to the undoubtedly somatogenic psychoses. The term of "epileptic psychosis", however, includes the somatogenic, endogenic, as well as the psychogenic psychoses of the patients with epilepsy. The question of the psychogenesis of schizophrenia-like, maniac or depressive psychoses in epileptics until now cannot be answered because the psychosocial patterns which might condition them have not jet been investigated upon. Anyhow, the exclusive psychogenesis of a schizophrenialike epileptic psychosis leaves to be proved.