The Relationship Between the Depressive Illnesses

In discussion of the wider issue of the characteristics of, and the relationship between, the classes ‘psychosis' and ‘neurosis', Maxwell (1972) wrote: ‘… the majority of all patients tend to have a basic core of symptoms, neurotic in type, which lend themselves to a dimensional description, but one whose prominence decreases somewhat as we pass from neurotic through affective psychotics to schizophrenics. In addition there are the psychotic type symptoms, which are rare and haphazard in occurrence. These are virtually absent in neurotics: they are most common in schizophrenics, but still not sufficiendy numerous or patterned to support a clear-cut typology or to lend themselves to a dimensional description.’