[Is the insight a favourable prognostic factor in the treatment of mental disorders?]

In the history of psychology, psychoanalysis and psychiatry, the concept of insight has had alternate fortunes and has been variously interpreted according to the observation apex from which it has been studied. In psychiatry, particularly, the insight has been considered close to the concept of disease consciouness and, consequently, the presence and the degree of intensity of insight have been put in relation with the adhesion to the treatments (the compliance) and the prognostic development of the mental disorders. With regard to the insight, through the analysis of several interpretative models, the authors emphasize how to draw the history of a possible passage of this concept from the side of individual psychopathology to the bi-personal side of therapeutic relationship, where the insight of the patient meets regarding its desease and that of the therapeutist regarding the objects of the treatment.