The 12 Most Curious And Shocking Types Of Delusions
Delusions are a phenomenon that has aroused the interest of psychiatrists and psychologists for decades. After all, for a long time we have believed that we tend to analyze the information that comes to us through our senses rationally, and that if we fall into deception, it will be because our eyes or ears have betrayed us.
However, the existence of delusions shows that we can interpret things in a deeply erroneous way even when our senses provide us with perfectly reliable information.
Strange delusions: alterations in interpreting reality
Unlike what happens in hallucinations, in which alterations are perceived in the information perceived by the different senses of the body, In delusions what is strange and not very credible is the way in which ideas are organized that is, the way in which reality is interpreted.
To understand this idea, nothing better than seeing some examples of the most curious and extreme delusions of which there is evidence in pathological cases.
Types of delusions (and their characteristics)
One way to classify delusions is to use the categories of non-pathological delusions and strange delusions. Below we will show some examples belonging to the second category: delusions that are so strange that they go against what we know about what reality is like and that are extremely unbelievable even before their veracity has been put to the test.
1. Cotard syndrome
People with Cotard Syndrome have one of the strangest delusions known: they believe they are dead physically or spiritually. This delusion can take many forms: some people literally believe that they are rotting inside, while others simply believe that the plane of reality in which they live is that of the dead.
Typically, this type of delirium is accompanied by avolition, that is, the pathological absence of motivation or initiative. After all, there are few things that can be meaningful to someone who believes himself to be dead and who, in some way, feels that he does not belong “in this world.”
2. Enemy Complex
People who manifest Enemy Complex hold the delusional idea that they are surrounded by enemies. who look for an opportunity to hurt them physically, psychologically or symbolically. In this way, a good part of the actions of others will be interpreted as acts directed at oneself; Scratching your nose can be a signal for another enemy to prepare to attack us, looking in our direction can be part of an espionage strategy, etc. This is a belief related to persecution mania.
3. Diffusion of thought
People who have this form of delusion believe that their thoughts are audible to others. that is, they produce sound waves that can be recorded by ears and electronic devices just as would occur with any noise. Of course, this delusional idea produces great frustration and anxiety, since it leads to acting as a “mental police” and self-censorship even though one does not have total control over what crosses one’s mind.
4. Thought reading
In this type of delirium I miss the person believe that others (or a portion of people, regardless of whether they are near or far) can read your thoughts through a kind of telepathic contact. This belief often translates into the appearance of rituals created to avoid this supposed reading of thoughts: repeating “protective words” over and over again, wrapping one’s head in something, etc.
People who express this delusion believe that someone is stealing some of their ideas. right after they are created. It is a sensation similar to the phenomenon of “having something on the tip of your tongue”, although in this case this is perceived as a process in stages: first that thought is created and then it disappears to end up somewhere else that is unknown. .
6. Insertion of thought
In this delirium the belief is sustained that part of the thoughts that circulate in one’s head have been introduced into one’s own mind by a foreign entity in a way similar to what is proposed in the movie Inception (in Spanish, “Origin”).
7. Capgras syndrome
One of the symptoms of this rare syndrome is the belief that someone important in our lives has been replaced. by another person practically identical to the previous one. Patients with this strange delusion believe that only they realize the deception and that the impostor has managed to make everyone else not notice the substitution.
In this way, although the person recognizes in the other’s features the objective features that serve to identify someone’s face, this information does not produce the normal emotional reaction.
8. Fregoli syndrome
This syndrome is associated with a type of delirium similar to the previous one. As in Capgras cases, a form of delusional false identification also occurs here: In Fregoli Syndrome, the person believes that everyone else, or a good part of the people around them, are actually a single character. that changes its appearance constantly. This belief easily leads to other delusions based on the idea that someone is out to get us.
9. Delusions of grandeur
People with delusions of grandeur They sincerely believe that they have qualities that are far above what would be expected from a human being. : the ability to make everyone happy, to always offer the best conversations ever, etc. Any action they take, no matter how anecdotal or routine, will be seen by them as a great contribution to the community.
It is important to emphasize the fact that people with this type of delusion truly believe in their superior abilities, and that it is not a matter of giving the best image of oneself to others by deliberately exaggerating one’s positive traits.
10. Reduplicative paramnesia
People with this type of paramnesia believe that one place or landscape has been replaced by another. or that the same place is in two places at the same time. For example, someone visiting a new building in Madrid may believe that that place is actually the nursery school in Buenos Aires that they used to go to during their first years of life.
11. Delusion of control
Who presents delusions of control She believes that she is a kind of puppet in the hands of a superior force that controls her. This can be expressed by saying that there is someone who is possessing one’s body, or that one is receiving a series of instructions telepathically and that one has the obligation to comply with them.
12. The Truman Show Rave
In the film The Truman Show, Jim Carrey plays a man who has been raised on a gigantic city-shaped television set, surrounded by cameras and actors playing a role, without him realizing it. This work of fiction served as inspiration for brothers Ian and Joel Gold, the former a philosopher and the latter a psychiatrist, who in 2008 They used this name to designate cases of people who believed they lived in a televised fiction. in which the only real character is them. This delusion presents characteristics of delusions of grandeur and persecution mania.
