Abstract
This thesis is a theoretical study of what it means to become psychotic and to be psy-chotic. This thesis will examine what psychological conditions may lead to psychotic states. Today, the concept of psychosis is not considered an etiological concept, where-as a diagnosis such as schizophrenia is diagnosed based on the established etiological and prototypical diagnostic criteria that can be clinically observed and characteristic of schizophrenia.
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate which psychological components can lead to psychotic disorders and schizophrenia and identify the risk factors associated with psychotic illness.
The study is based on how the phenomenon of psychosis and schizophrenia can be understood from a psychodynamic and anthropological psychological perspective.
The thesis is divided into four main sections. The first section describes the historical development of the concept of psychosis up until today.
The second part describes the criteria that must be met concerning the diagnosis of schizophrenia based on the WHO ICD-10 classification system; here the contextual and biopsychosocial components will also be discussed.

Four developmental psychodynamic theories are presented in the third part of this the-sis to provide an understanding of what can lead to psychotic disorders and schizo-phrenia. The selected psychodynamic theories entail Freud's libido theory; Erikson's ego psychological theories; Klein's and Winnicott's object relation theories; and Stern's self-psychological working hypotheses.
The fourth section entails the anthropological theory of the hierarchical levels of the connectedness of the psyche, which relate to the human consciousness, the self and free will.
Derived from the psychodynamic theory, the study found that anxiety disorders, lack of basic confidence, true and false self-organisation coping strategies, and an authentic sense of the core self are some of the psychological aspects that can lead to psychotic disorders and schizophrenia.

The anthropological perspective of the human psyche and psychotic disorders found that the human psyche is action-intentionally connected to the world in the form of thoughts, feelings, and a sense of what we should do in different situations; and not behaviourally driven like in other primates, whereas the intentional connectedness to the world can be presumed to increase the risk of developing psychotic disorders and schizophrenia.
The findings from this study are obtained from a limited, theoretical, psychological perspective. An understanding of what can lead to psychotic disorders and schizophre-nia is therefore still a complex question that requires greater interdisciplinary collabora-tion to be answered.