Organic mental disorders as hypothetical pathogenetic processes.

A new diagnostic system for organic psychiatry is presented. We first define "organic psychiatry", and then give the theoretical basis for conceiving organic-psychiatric disorders in terms of hypothetical psychopathogenetic processes, HPP:s. Such hypothetical disorders are not strictly identical to the clusters of symptoms in which they typically manifest themselves, since the symptoms may be concealed or modified by intervening factors in non-typical circumstances and/or in the simultaneous presence of several disorders. The six basic disorders in our system are Astheno-Emotional Disorder (AED), Somnolence-Sopor-Coma Disorder (SSCD), Hallucination-Coenestopathy-Depersonalisation Disorder (HCDD), Confusional Disorder (CD), Emotional-Motivational Blunting Disorder (EMD) and Korsakoff's Amnestic Disorder (KAD). We describe their usual etiologies, their typical symptoms and course, and some forms of interaction between them.