[Diagnostic approach to psychogenic processes--an attempt to differentiate psychodynamic patterns (author's transl)].

An attempt is made to define "emotional reactions", a disease concept in child and adolescent neuropsychiatry which encompasses all processes of psychogenic origin. Emotional reaction, which is defined as psychophysical perturbation of short duration induced by trauma or some other event, is distinguished from neurotic reaction, one of the forms of an unconscious psychodynamic process, and from abnormal personality development, which encompasses all factors affecting psychological development, i.e. deprivation, stimulation, as well as abnormal field and environmental conditions. The differentiation between these 3 processes, which are based on entirely different psychodynamic patterns, has diagnostic and, of still greater importance, therapeutic implications.