Manic-Depressive Psychosis: An Alternative Conceptual Model

The traditional concept of manic-depressive psychosis has been either a bi-polar or a circular one, used interchangeably. The psychoanalytic school has invoked the polarity of much of human behaviour as an appropriate analogy. For example “The tragedy is succeeded by the satyr play: after the serious worship of God comes the merry fair… On the same basis the same sequence is represented by the cycle of guilt feelings and unscrupulousness, later by the sequence of guilt feelings and forgiveness…. The manic-depressive cycle is a cycle between periods of increased and decreased guilt feelings: … this cycle, in the last analysis, goes back to the biological cycle of hunger and satiety in the infant” (Fenichel, 1946, p. 409).