Implications of the distinction between organic and functional psychoses

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Abstract
On the basis of their symptomatology, some psychoses are called organic. The remaining psychoses are called functional. It is generally supposed that symptomatically organic psychoses have organic causes; and thus call for medical investigations, while the functional psychoses are not so caused and call for a dynamic formulation rather than an organic one. The basis for this distinction is examined and argued to be logically unsound. Examples of exceptions to the rule are given, both organic-seeming illnesses that are the consequence of psychological mechanisms, and symptomatologically functional psychoses with organic antecedents. The exceptions prove to be so numerous that a different approach to the investigation of the psychoses, an approach stressing antecedents rather than symptomatology, appears to be called for.

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