Delusions or delusions are"erroneous beliefs that usually involve a misinterpretation of perceptions or experiences"(APA, 1995). They are part of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Delusional ideas are classified as strange and not strange. Here we shall speak of the strangest ones.
Strange types are the most common in schizophrenia. For a delusional idea to be considered strange, it must be improbable without any doubt. Also that can not be understood or unrelated to normal life experiences. Like believing you have a nest of bees replacing the lungs.
This article will present 10 types of delusions of Western culture. With this, the objective is to understand the dimensions that can take a psychotic disorder and the atypical that can be the experience of the reality for someone who suffers it. This from the respect and the spreading spirit of science.
From the belief that inanimate objects have life and consciousness, even the idea that the person reflected in the mirror is different from the real, going through the delirium of being trapped in a movie. There are many delusional disorders that are recorded and here are some of the most relevant and interesting.
The invitation is to continue reading and sharing information, so that these mental health conditions are better known by society. This can help identify better affected people and, ultimately, helps science to follow its course and development.
10 strange types of delusions
1-The Capgras Syndrome
It is also known as the"illusion of the sosias". A sosias is someone who is much like another person, to the point that it is difficult to distinguish them. Many people, for example, have become famous for being almost identical to movie stars or TV, and others are hired as a doubles of important public figures (as presidents).
At Capgras syndrome , Then the person believes that an important person in his life (for example, a relative) has been exchanged for someone indistinguishable from the original. That is to say, by a sosias, by an impostor. At times you might come to believe that many people in your environment (or all) have been changed by a double.
This syndrome is part of the sign of false identification, which is common to several delusional ideas. When a person looks at someone they know, the visual recognition system activates the functions of affective memory. Although they are almost simultaneous processes, they differ. It is believed that in the Capgras Syndrome the second part of the process fails.
Thus, the person can recognize the factions and other visual elements of their loved one but can not make the emotional connections. This leads you to think that this is someone else who has supplanted the original. For this to occur, however, it is necessary that present deteriorated reasoning and disorganized thinking.
Other researchers, on the other hand, argue that the problem lies not in the conscious emotional connection (the one dominated by biology), but in the unconscious. For this reason, it would be a syndrome with a better prognosis if it is attended by means of psychotherapy than by psychopharmacology.
2- The Subjective Doubles Syndrome
This is also part of the Delusional False Identification Syndromes. It is quite similar to the Capgras Syndrome, only that in this case the affected one believes that the double has it himself. He believes that he is a person identical to himself (or more than one), but usually conceives him with opposing personality traits.
These types of doubles are often called"doppelgänger", which is a common element of Germanic mythology. It refers to the ghostly double of someone alive or a bad twin. Also to bilocation, which is the supernatural ability to be in more than one place simultaneously. All these possibilities can be believed by the sufferer of this syndrome.
In some cases, the subject with this delusion may believe that twice as much of himself is a relative or a stranger. This would involve the hallucination of seeing others with their same appearance. In most cases, however, delirium consists only in the fear or concern that there is some double of itself wandering the world.
Since it was first described in 1978 there are very few recorded cases of this condition, so it is considered a strange delusional subject within psychotic disorders. That is why it has not been adequately studied.
Another variation of the syndrome would be the belief that there is one or more of the affected person's doubles at different ages. Also that the double is identical physically and psychologically. Or, while the double maintains the appearance of the affected, this one is transforming into another person, making the double supplant definitively.
3- Intermetamorphosis
Another False Identification Delirious Syndrome is the intermetamorphosis. It consists in the belief that the people who surround the affected person become someone else, both in the external and in the internal. It differs from the Capgras Syndrome in that the affected person can see how the change happens in each person, which constitutes a hallucination.
Another difference is that the affected person believes that people also change their external appearance. This is usually associated with agnosia, which is the impossibility of recognizing stimuli that have already been learned, as well as learning new stimuli. In this case, the person loses the ability to describe or recognize the people he sees.
Many Delusional False Identification Syndromes are associated with a specific agnosia, known as Prosopagnosia . Refers to the inability to recognize faces. In this syndrome the affectation is more complex, because the face, the rest of the body or the psychological characteristics of the person is not recognized.
In some cases described, the affected person may believe that the same person changes more than once in form or personality. For example, you might believe that a colleague is a child and then a brother, to later believe that it is a neighbor. This type of presentation may occur in cases of Alzheimer disease .
4- Delirium of False Identification in the Mirror
This disorder consists of the delusional idea that when the affected person is seen in a mirror, the observed reflex is another person. Usually, the belief is that it is a minor version of the affected, a second version, a relative or a stranger. The starting point of delirium is the agnosia of the mirror, or the inability to recognize itself in this object.
It is more common for this disorder to occur in people with dementia. But it can also be due to cerebral trauma, stroke or other neurological conditions, usually due to cranial dysfunction of the right hemisphere. Of the delirious ideas presented so far, this is one of those that has received more complete studies.
This condition occurs in 2 to 10% of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Also in patients with schizophrenia , Stroke and less typically in people with Alzheimer's disease. It is difficult to calculate its total prevalence, but it is considered a rare condition, based on strange type delusions.
Not all people with mirror agnosia exhibit this delirium. What defines delirium is not not recognizing oneself in the mirror, but believing that the reflection is a different person, or that there is an objective world on the other side of the mirror. For example, if you look at yourself in the mirror, an object is presented behind you, you will try to take it over the mirror, without turning.
5- Delirious Company Syndrome
People affected by this syndrome believe that some of the objects around them have life and can think independently and feel emotions. In other words, that inanimate objects have consciousness. The usual thing is that the objects are dolls and that the affected one begins to take care of them like real people.
It is common for the condition to occur in older adults with Alzheimer's disease, living alone or relatively isolated. Faced with this, the need for company can unleash delirium. It should not be confused with the normal game of children, where it is common to humanize objects to practice the symbolic game.
In Robert Zemeckis' film, Shipwrecked , The main character humanizes a ball of volleyball before the imminence of its solitude to the shipwreck in a desert island. Little by little, throughout the film, his bond with the inanimate object is taking on more force. This could be a representation of Delirious Company Syndrome.
It is believed that this syndrome is caused by damage to the neocortex. While language and memory are conserved, a severe deficit has been described in the processing of the brain areas in charge of visoperceptive and visospatial information. However, the investigations have not reached conclusive points.
6- Reduplicating Paramnesia
In this condition it is not a person who is believed to have been changed, but a place or setting. The person believes that a specific place, for example the house itself, has been moved to another place, usually far away. But it can also imply the belief that the place has been duplicated and now exists in more than one space at the same time.
As in other cases of Delusional False Identification Syndromes, the presence of brain damage is also presumed to be the cause. Although more specifically when the lesion has simultaneously affected the right hemisphere and the two Frontal lobes . This can occur during stroke, tumors, dementia, among others.
In reduplicative paramnesia, it is also common for patients to find themselves in emotionally insignificant places, insisting that such a place has been transferred to a family setting. They could insist, for example, that a psychiatric clinic is in their hometown or in the closet of their room.
7- The Complex of the Enemy
The enemy complex is a kind of delirious idea in which the person believes, without any logical or real basis, that is surrounded by enemies. It is related to persecutory delusions, in which the person believes that he is pursued, spies, annoys deceives or ridicules.
It is also associated with delusional self-referential ideas. In these, the person is convinced that the gestures or comments of people (even tiny or disconnected) are aimed at them. Also phrases of books or newspapers, pieces of songs or films, among others.
One type of enemy complex is kerulomania, also known as claiming delirium. In this pathology, the affected person believes that he is constantly offended or that injustices or illegal actions have been committed. And for this reason it undertakes continuous legal actions, which ends up losing and can lead to bankruptcy.
A delusional idea contrary to that of the enemy complex would be erotomania. This is the belief that another person (usually someone famous) is in love with the affected (who may not know formally). Under this sign the person could believe that any gesture of the beloved is a secret encrypted message to reveal his love.
People affected by the enemy complex or by erotomania have sometimes committed crimes. The first to defend against false enemies, the latter for the delusional belief that injuring or killing someone will please the beloved. This is less likely in cherubomania because of obsessive respect for laws.
Cotard's syndrome
This syndrome is also known as nihilistic delirium or negation. Usually it is related to the hypochondria And consists in believing that he is dead and in decay. It could also imply the belief of not existing or, on the contrary, in the belief that you can not die.
People affected by this condition may come to believe that nothing exists, that there is no death, that some part of their body does not exist or stopped their action. For this reason they may think that they do not need to eat. Some show hallucinations about odors of their decomposition or see worms on their skin.
It is possible, moreover, to think that other people close to him also died and now find themselves plaguing the world of mortals as immortal souls. Or they are not in the mortal world, but in heaven, hell or some other mystical place. As in other delusional syndromes, the causes have not been widely validated.
9- Delirium of The Truman Show
In the film The Truman Show , By director Peter Weir, the main character is Truman, a man who lives, deceived, in a reality show from his birth. Everyone around him is an actor, except for him, who believes he is living in reality. Researchers Joel and Ian Gold took this film as inspiration to name this disorder.
In the delirium of The Truman Show, the affected believes that his life is part of a movie, a play or a reality show. It is a delusional persecutory idea, but also a delirium of greatness, which are characterized by believing to be the center of attention or have a role or importance greater than that has within the society.
Although the term is not accepted and does not form part of any diagnostic manual, there have been at least 40 cases of potential affected among several countries. In these, one observes the belief that the events of the world are mounts made to make them believe that they live in reality.
In one of the cases registered by the Gold brothers the affected one visited New York after the attacks of 9/11, suspecting that it was an invention to give a turn to his personal film. Several of the Gold patients say they associate their experiences with what they had seen in Peter Weir's film.
This is a sample of how culture and technological changes affect the issues of delusional disorders. While once mythology and religion founded the bulk of delusional ideas, it is now possible for pop culture to be its genesis. After all, movies like this and The Matrix Only reflect a current collective concern.
10- Fregoli Syndrome
This last one of the 10 types of delusions addressed in this article also belongs to the Delusional False Identification Syndromes. In this case it has to do with the patient's belief that several people or all people in the world are really one person. The affected might think that the subject disguises or see them all identical.
In the Charlie Kaufman movie, Anomalisa , Tells the story of a man who sees and hears all people, regardless of age, sex, race or provenance, with the same face and voice. Although the syndrome is not mentioned in the film, the director wrote the play based on the pseudonym Francis Fragoli.
In this syndrome It is also possible that the affected person creates and insists that he knows someone whom he does not really know. They may also believe that a particular person pursues them or that, in order to pursue them, it takes the form of other people. In some atypical cases, Fregoli Syndrome may occur alongside the Capgras Syndrome.
References
1 Delusion . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
2 Psychosis . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
3 The Capgras Delusion: You Are Not My Wife! Taken from psychologytoday.com/blog.
4 Double trouble: Syndrome of subjective doubles . Taken from drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com.
5 Doppelgänger . Taken from en.wikipedia.org/wiki.
6 Bilocation . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
7 Intermetamorphosis . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
Referring to Fig. Agnosia . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
9 Prosopagnosia . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
10 Mirrored-self misidentification . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
eleven Delusional companion syndrome . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
12 Reduplicative Paramnesia: Not Only One . Taken from neuro.psychiatryonline.org.
13 Delusional misidentification syndrome . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
14 Enemy complex . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
fifteen Querulant . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
16 Erotomania . Taken from en.wikipedia.org.
17 The Cotard Delusion . Taken from delusionaldisorders.wordpress.com..
18 A new kind of delusion? A growing number of psychotic patients believe they are the stars of reality TV shows. Taken from apa.org.
19 What is Fregoli Delusion? Taken from delusionaldisorders.wordpress.com.
twenty Delusional Misidentification Syndromes. Separate Disorders or Unusual Presentations of Existing DSM-IV Categories? Taken from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
twenty-one Beautiful Distortions: Fregoli Delusion in Kaufman's Anomalisa . Taken from scienceandfilm.org.