Capgras delusion is the belief that significant others have been replaced by impostors, robots or aliens. Although it usually occurs within a psychiatric illness, it can also be the result of brain injury or other obviously organic disorder. In contrast to patients with prosopagnosia, who cannot consciously recognize previously familiar faces but display autonomic or covert recognition (measure...

Prior experiences and delusion content The Italian pilot study by Catone and colleagues (2) in this issue focuses on the relationship between stressful experiences and delusion content in adolescents with psychotic disorders. The authors hypothesize that a biographic continuity or “thematic link” can develop between the themes of previous life experiences and the content of a patient’s delusion...

Capgras Syndrome is a psychotic condition characterized by the delusion that someone has been replaced by an imposter. It is named after an early twentieth century French psychiatrist, Joseph Capgras, who himself referred to the condition as “l’illusion de sosies”, i.e. the illusion of doubles (Capgras and Reboul-Lachaux 1923). Although cases involving ‘doppelgänger’ doctors, household staff, n...

This study presents Doris Lessing as one of the most accomplished and significant British writers post-World War II generation. Her work looks into The Grass is Singing (1950) from a psychological, socio-cultural economic point view. It attempts to analyze bleak tragic causes effects self-delusion in lives female male characters alike racist society grappling with number deep-rooted social poli...

I examine the central atheistic argument of Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion (“Dawkins’s Gambit”) and illustrate its failure. I further show that Dawkins’s Gambit is a fragment of a more comprehensive critique of theism found in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Among the failings of Dawkins’s Gambit is that it is directed against a version of the God Hypothesis that fe...

The dominant cognitive model that accounts for the persistence of delusional beliefs in schizophrenia postulates that patients suffer from a general deficit in belief revision. It is generally assumed that this deficit is a consequence of impaired reasoning skills. However, the possibility that such inflexibility affects the entire system of a patient's beliefs has rarely been empirically teste...

Formation of delusions in the phase of acute psychosis is based on two subsequent processes. The first one is dopamine hyperactivity in mesolimbic neural pathways, the second one is a cognitive process of up-down attribution of meanings of this subjectively perceived state of mind by the higher levels of brain. After the successful antipsychotic treatment, the subjectivity of patients changes. ...

The aim of the study was to identify the phenomenological characteristics of those delusions which are associated with action. The sample consisted of 79 patients admitted to a general psychiatric ward, each of whom described at least one delusional belief. The variables studied included the phenomenology of the delusions, and behaviour. Two behavioural ratings were used, one derived from the s...

The phenomenological presentation of late-onset schizophrenia is a topic of considerable debate. This study aims to look at the clinical presentation of late-onset schizophrenia. Charts of all subjects who received a diagnosis of schizophrenia between January 1990 and December 1993 with age of onset being 45 or more were systematically analysed using the OPCRIT checklist. Of the 89 subjects cho...