Delirium: defence or psychopathological construction?

In this work I discuss the nature of delirium in order to envisage a therapeutic approach to psychosis. Particular attention is given to the nature and structure of the delusional experience and its relationship with the healthy part of the personality. If delirium represents a psychopathological construction that obliterates the ability to understand emotional experience, the therapeutic work consists in reducing its power to recover intuitive thinking and re-establish contact with emotional reality. There is a place in the patient's mind, virtually inaccessible, where the psychotic state is continuously constructed. Hence the importance of orienting the analytical work towards becoming aware of the meaning of psychotic organisation, which tends to encompass the self and destroy the sense of reality. In this sense, as I have tried to show in the clinical fragments reported in the work, psychotic dreams are very useful because they constitute the true communication to the analyst that does not come true until the patient remains an accomplice and submissive to the delusional organisation. From this point of view while delirium hides, the dream communicates.