How does a person become psychotic and how do you define a psychotic person?
I think in the strictest sense, ‘psychotic’ is now referred to as ‘sociopathic’ due to more information about the condition. One cannot ‘become’ sociopathic (psychotic), except perhaps through brain damage. The condition is typically defined by a complete incapability for social behaviour – a slight form of solipsism is probably a major form that this takes; the sociopath does not care what other people think or feel. Actually being violent isn’t so much a part of the condition (though that’s typically what people think), although since in most cases a sociopath (psychotic person) can be quite violent, because they rarely have any compassion for other people, and will do things without realising the harm it can cause, or will deliberately cause harm to get something they want because they don’t appreciate that others feel pain, etc.
