[Persistent forty-eight hour cycle in a case of manic-depressive psychosis-chromopathological aspects (author's transl)].

Connections between psychopathological symptoms and chronobiological factors are discussed in the light of a bipolar manic-depressive illness in a female patient suffering during several years from a cycle of 24 hours of depression alternating with one day of hypomania. The forty-eight hour periodic psychosis was evoked by a severe cerebral trauma. All over the world there is only a small number of patients with such regular psychotic cycles. They present a good opportunity to study a conceptual model of desynchronization in phasic psychiatric disorders implying the hypothesis of disturbance of the time structure of functions resulting in a psychotic state.