The Psychology and Psychotherapy of Psychosis
Most psychiatrists and psychologists today take an almost exclusively biological, medicalized view of psychosis, believing it to be a "broken brain" disease. A "mental illness." A genetically inherited neurobiological abnormality. A fundamentally physiological phenomenon.
But this is merely one as yet unproven theory of psychosis. Yes, concordance rates of identical twins suffering from schizophrenia have been estimated to be around 50-70% by most studies, but that is still far from 100%, suggesting other causal factors at play, some of them likely psychological in nature.
In reality, psychosis is a very broad category of mental disorder with a relatively vague definition. But the vast majority of mental health professionals today would agree that psychosis basically consists phenomenologically of the presence of hallucinations and/or delusions, disorganized speech, usually marked impairment that grossly interferes with social, occupational, or day-to-day functioning ("negative symptoms"), and poor reality testing, insight, and judgment or a so-called "break with reality."
In his book Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic (1996) and during this talk psychologist Dr Stephen Diamond provides some alternative ways of conceptualizing psychosis (colloquially called madness) from psychodynamic, Jungian, and existential perspectives and discusses its correlation to the chronic repression, dissociation, or denial of what his former mentor Rollo May (1969) referred to as the daimonic.
About the speaker:
DR. STEPHEN DIAMOND, a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist, has been practicing psychotherapy for five decades now. A former pupil and protégé of existential psychoanalyst Dr. Rollo May, he is the distinguished author of the critically acclaimed book Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity. Foreword by Rollo May (SUNY Press, 1996), and has contributed chapters to a number of texts including the bestselling Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature (Tarcher/Putnam, 1991), Spirituality and Psychological Health (CSOPP Press, 2005), Forensic Psychiatry: Influences of Evil (Humana Press, 2006), the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (Springer, 2009), Contemporary Theory and Practice in Counseling and Psychotherapy (SAGE, 2015), Writing Music (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2018), The Complexity of Psychopathy (Springer, 2022), and, most recently, the American Psychological Association Handbook of Humanistic and Existential Psychology (APA Books, 2026). His writing has also been published in numerous professional journals, such as the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, the Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, PsycCRITIQUES, Psychological Perspectives, and the Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. Dr. Diamond has taught and lectured at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (Palo Alto University), Argosy University, J.F.K. University, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (Sophia University), Ryokan College, the C.G. Jung Institute (Zurich, Switzerland), the Existential Academy (London, England), the Los Angeles Jung Institute, and Loyola Marymount University. He has supervised hundreds of psychotherapy trainees over the course of his career and continues to serve as Clinical Supervisor to graduate students at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology in Los Angeles.
A former member of the Approved Panel of Psychiatrists and Psychologists for the Superior Court of Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties (Criminal Divisions), Dr. Diamond still testifies frequently as an expert witness in court regarding grave disability, dangerousness, and competency to stand trial, has been interviewed on television and radio as an expert commentator and appeared on camera in many televised crime documentaries about Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson, Drew Peterson, Phil Spector, and Joran van der Sloot, among others. He writes regularly for Psychology Today in his long-running, popular blog "Evil Deeds" (10 million readers to date) (https://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/stephen-diamond-phd), lectures and teaches internationally, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, is employed as the Consulting and Supervising Psychologist at a private psychiatric treatment facility and a contracted clinical psychologist for Kaiser Permanente Medical Group, and maintains a private psychotherapy practice based in Los Angeles.
Ticketing structure:
Member: $110
Non-member: $140
Student: $55
