Medical Hypotheses
Volume 58, Issue 1 , Pages 9-10, January 2002

The generation of psychosis: a pragmatic approach

  • J Zislin

      Affiliations

    • Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center, affiliated with the Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem
    • ,
  • V Kuperman

      Affiliations

    • The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
    • ,
  • R Durst

      Affiliations

    • Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center, affiliated with the Hebrew University, Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem

Received 8 August 2000; accepted 21 February 2001.

Abstract 

The paper discusses the role of speech in the generation of psychosis. The traditional phenomenological approach describes schizophrenic speech as desocialized, autistic and destructive. Based on ‘Speech Act Theory’, we argue that patients in an acute psychotic state assign maximal illocutionary force to their utterances and mark these speech acts as felicitous. We hypothesize that the pragmatic approach can serve a special role in bilingual patients, the mother tongue being more pronounced in the generation of the psychosis. This view gains support from clinical experience and case studies and can be used as a treatment strategy for bilingual patients.

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  • f1 Correspondence to: Josef Zislin, Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center, Jerusalem 91060, Israel. Phone: +972 2 655 1559; Fax: +972 2 654 1281; E-mail: josef@isdn.net.il

PII: S0306-9877(01)91392-1

doi:10.1054/mehy.2001.1392

Medical Hypotheses
Volume 58, Issue 1 , Pages 9-10, January 2002

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