Dirk Bryssinck – Psychosis, Toxicomania and The Homeless
 
THE LETTER 20 Autumn 2000, pages 117-129
 
Formulation of the Problem: A New Diagnosis?
 
The psychiatric landscape has undergone a lot of changes in the last couple of years. This constant evolution shouldn’t surprise us, considering its youthful existence and bearing in mind that psychiatry always follows in the wake of an ongoing society. Hysteria is commonly known to adapt itself to the prevailing discourse, but that psychoses should also be appearing in a new attire is a relatively new feature. Since Nietzsche’s creed that God is dead one has rarely come across the ‘traditional’ psychotic delusions, such as the religious delusion of redemption. In the footsteps of literary forerunners like Burroughs, Huxley and Leary, psychotics have discovered drugs, – drugs which we consider as one of the current symptoms of discomfort in our post-modern culture.