Hommage to reactive psychosis.

When looking back in the history of psychiatry, the concept of reactivity had very variable impact on ethiological considerations. If classification of mental disorders is taken as a proxy, it seems that this impact is presently at the lowest that it has been in the last hundred years. The author gives a short historical overview of concept of reactive psychosis, followed by a description of the current state of the art. He pleads for a rethinking of the current position as stated in ICD-10. Reintroduction of a certain degree of the reactivity concept into the classification seems to be required.