Absence of integration or successful completion: "The psychiatrist diagnosed his patient as having atelesis or a disintegration or dissociation of different psychic functions because of her schizophrenic disjunction (separation of something normally joined together) between her inner and outer worlds."

"Atelesis has been used by psychiatrists to refer to three major disjunctions that are well known in schizophrenic psychopathology:

• Disjunction of a person's inner world and environment (autism or phantasies, delusions, hallucinations, etc.).
• Disjunction of one's ego and the contents of consciousness (splitting or incomplete ego development).
• Disjunction of someone's experience contents and the elementary forms of mental perception (destruction of conscious and willful focusing on one object or one component at a time).