Cause: Ego Collapse

Q: Can you tell me what a psychotic break is? I can't seem to find any information about it.

A: There are, at least to my way of thinking, several states of mind..."normal", meaning consistent over time and situations; "disorganized", meaning a little scattered, unfocused, fragmented; "disturbed", meaning a state of mind leading to behavior that is socially unacceptable and potentially harmful to self and others; "disordered", meaning a display of clinically definable and diagnosable symptoms that are clustered under one primary heading (Depression, Borderline, Kleptomania, etc.); and "dissociated", meaning a collapse of the "ego integrity", a state of mind where the person is unsure of who they are, where they are, what they are doing and how they should be behaving - a pervasive and overall loss of "identity" and "sense-of-self".

The last, "dissociation" is generally considered a "psychotic break". In other words, a person is so overwhelmed by either internal or external turmoil that what we generally think of their "ego" just plain collapses.

Source: Ask the Therapist