The General Psychiatric Syndrome: Neuropsychopathological Aspects. A Unified Theory of Symbolic Collapse, Neurodevelopmental Vulnerability, and the Epistemic Structure of Mind

This article proposes a novel integrative theory of mental illness, uniting neurobiological, linguistic, and structural-symbolic dimensions under the concept of a General Psychiatric Syndrome (GPS). Rather than treating psychiatric diagnoses as isolated disorders, the paper defends the existence of a shared symbolic vulnerability underlying various clinical expressions—such as psychosis, affective states, regression, and dissociation. Drawing upon clinical experience, evolutionary theory, and philosophical reflection, the article argues that psychiatric symptoms reflect not local errors, but fractures in the symbolic scaffolding that sustains human consciousness. The theory is structured in eight parts and includes original graphical and conceptual models. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the manuscript—spanning psychiatry, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind, we think it opens new and original conceptual frameworks in psychiatry. The article presents the General Psychiatric Syndrome (GPS) as a transdiagnostic and integrative theory of mental illness. It challenges the categorical fragmentation of contemporary psychiatry and proposes that diverse syndromes—such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, substance abuse, and personality disorders—are differential manifestations of a single underlying pathophysiological structure. Grounded in over four decades of clinical observation and informed by neurobiology, philosophy of mind, and symbolic theory, GPS reframes psychiatric symptoms as disruptions in symbolic integration, frontal-limbic-temporal circuitry, and the interpersonal construction of the self. The theory draws on neurodevelopmental gradients, mirror neuron dysfunction, hormonal modulation, and early relational trauma to explain how structural failures in symbolic mediation produce the full range of psychiatric phenomena. Figures II–V illustrate this progression across syndromes and dimensions. GPS also serves as a philosophical and ethical critique of technocratic psychiatry, arguing that mental illness is not computational error but collapse within the symbolic scaffolding of human consciousness. Integrating contributions from Chalmers, Damasio, Lacan, McGilchrist, and Searle, this work proposes that the psychiatric subject is both epistemically and cosmologically central: the condition of knowledge, the witness to symbolic failure, and the bearer of a universal human vulnerability. The General Psychiatric Syndrome thus calls for a symbolic reconstruction of psychiatry—one that honors the structure of the subject, the ethics of suffering, and the fragile architecture of meaning