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New data on psychotic pathologies is emerging from three sources: research into the detection and understanding of early forms of psychoses; recent work on the phenomenology of exceptional experiences. Paradoxically, psychosis can be thought of as a defense turned against the emergence of these states qualified “as psychotic states of the psyche” This new knowledge creates a framework for viewing psychotic pathologies against the backdrop of what can be called psychotic episodes related to expressing “psychotic states of the psyche”, and could reawaken debate between various psychoanalytical currents about the psychotic forms of psychopathology.