Madness Explained

by Richard P. Bental

  49. J. Thomas and R. P. Bentall (2002) ‘Hypomanic traits and response styles to depression’, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41: 309–13.

  50. Lam and Wong, ‘Prodromes, coping strategies, insight and social functioning’, op. cit.

  Chapter 12 Abnormal Attitudes

  1. D. Schreber (1903/1955) Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (trans. I. Macalpine and R. A. Hunter). London: Dawsons.

  2. S. Freud (1911/1950) ‘Psychoanalytic notes upon an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)’, Collected Papers (vol. III). London: Hogarth Press.

  3. M. Stone (1997) Healing the Mind: A History of Psychiatry from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Norton.

  4. Schreber, Memoirs of my Nervous Illness, op. cit.

  5. I. Macalpine and R. A. Hunter (1955) ‘Preface’, in D. Schreber (1903/1955) Memoirs, op. cit.

  6. Freud, ‘Psychoanalytic notes’, op. cit.

  7. E. Bleuler (1911/1950) Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias (trans. E. Zinkin). New York: International Universities Press.

  8. K. Colby, S. Weber and F. D. Hilf (1971) ‘Artificial paranoia’, Artificial Intelligence, 2: 1–25; K. M. Colby (1977) ‘Appraisal of four psychological theories of paranoid phenomena’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86: 54–9; K. M. Colby, W. S. Faught and R. C. Parkinson (1979) ‘Cognitive therapy of paranoid conditions: heuristic suggestions based on a computer simulation’, Cognitive Therapy and Research, 3: 55–60.

  9. M. Rokeach (1964) The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: A Narrative Study of Three Lost Men. New York: Vintage Books.

  10. P. Jorgensen and J. Jensen (1994) ‘Delusional beliefs in first admitters’, Psycho-pathology, 27: 100–12.

  11. P. Trower and P. Chadwick (1995) ‘Pathways to defense of the self: a theory of two types of paranoia’, Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 2: 263–78.

  12. H. Haltenh of, H. Ulrich and W. Blanenburg (1999) ‘Themes of delusion in 84 patients with unipolar depression’, Krankenhauspsychiatrie, 10: 87–90; H. Kuhs (1991) ‘Depressive delusion’, Psychopathology, 24: 106–14.

  13. J. P. Leff, M. Fisher and A. C. Bertelsen (1976) ‘Across-national epidemiological study of mania’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 129: 428–42.

  14. For good descriptive accounts of many of these types of delusions, see: M. D. Enoch and W. H. Trethowan (1979) Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes (2nd edn). Bristol: Wright; and L. Franzini and J. M. Grossberg (1995) Eccentric and Bizarre Behaviors. New York: John Wiley.

  15. P. K. Chadwick (1992) Borderline: A Psychological Study of Paranoia and Delusional Thinking. London: Routledge.

  16. I. McGilchrist and J. Cutting (1995) ‘Somatic delusions in schizophrenia and the affective psychoses’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 167: 350–61.

  17. M. Musalek, M. Bach, V. Passweg and S. Jaeger (1990) ‘The position of delusional parasitosis in psychiatric nosology and classification’, Psychopathology, 23: 115–24; M. Musalek, S. Zadro-Jaeger, O. M. Lesch and H. Walter (1992) ‘Traumatic events and traumatizing life conditions in delusional parasitosis: the significance of social isolation and tactile sensations in the pathogenesis of delusional parasitosis’, Psychiatrica Fennica, 23 (Supplement): 162–70.

  18. J. H. Segal (1989) ‘Erotomania revisited: from Kraepelin to DSM-III-R’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 146: 1261–6.

  19. D. Enoch (1991) ‘Delusional jealousy and awareness of reality’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 159 (Supplement 14): 52–6.

  20. M. Hamilton (ed.) (1983) Fish’s Psychopathology. Bristol: Wright.

  21. A. Young and K. Leaf head (1996) ‘Betwixt life and death: case studies of the Cotard delusion’, in P. W. Halligan and J. C. Marshall (eds.), Method in Madness: Case Studies in Cognitive Neuropsychiatry. Hove: Psychology Press, pp. 147–71.

  22. G. E. Berrios and R. Luque (1995) ‘Cotard’s syndrome: analysis of 100 cases’, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 91: 185–8.

  23. J. Capgras and J. Reboul-Lachaux (1923/1994) ‘L’illusion des “sosies” dans un délire systématise chronique’, History of Psychiatry, 5: 117–30.

  24. P. Coubon and G. Fail (1927/1994) ‘Syndrome d’illusion de Frégoli et schizophrénie’, History of Psychiatry, 5: 134–8.

  25. D. N. Anderson (1988) ‘The delusion of inanimate doubles’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 153: 694–9.

  26. K. Schneider (1949/1974) ‘The concept of delusion’, in S. R. Hirsch and M. Shepherd (eds.), Themes and Variations in European Psychiatry. Bristol: John Wright & Sons, pp.33–9.

  27. P. A. Garety, B. S. Everitt and D. R. Hemsley (1988) ‘The characteristics of delusions: a cluster analysis of deluded subjects’, European Archives of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences, 237: 112–14.

  28. D. M. Ndetei and A. Vadher (1984) ‘Frequency and clinical significance of delusions across cultures’, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 70: 73–6. For a more recent study, comparing delusional themes in Austria and Pakistan, which found persecutory delusions to be the most common in both countries, see T. Stompe, A. Friedman, G. Ortwein, R. Strobl, H. R. Chaudhry, N. Najam and M. R. Chaudhry (1999) ‘Comparisons of delusions among schizophrenics in Austria and Pakistan’, Psychopathology, 32: 225–34.

  29. M. F. Sendiony (1976) ‘Cultural aspects of delusions: a psychiatric study of Egypt’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 10: 201–7.

  30. K. Kim, D. Li, Z. Jiang and X. Cui (1993) ‘Schizophenic delusions among Koreans, Korean-Chinese and Chinese: a transcultural study’, International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 39: 190–9.

  31. J. Mitchell and A.D. Vierkant (1989) ‘Delusions and hallucinations as a reflection of the subcultural milieu among psychotic patients of the 1930s and 1980s’, Journal of Psychology, 123: 269–74.

  32. American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (4th edition). Washington, DC: APA.

  33. D. J. Harper (1992) ‘Defining delusions and the serving of professional interest: the case of “paranoia” ’, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 65: 357–69. See also D. Harper (1994) ‘Histories of suspicion in a time of conspiracy: a reflection on Aubrey Lewis’s history of paranoia’, History of the Human Sciences, 7: 89–109.

  34. See, for example, K. S. Kendler, W. Glazer and H. Morgenstern (1983) ‘Dimensions of delusional experience’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 140: 466–9; P. A. Garety and D. R. Hemsley (1987) ‘The characteristics of delusional experience’, European Archives of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences, 236: 294–8.

  35. M. Harrow, A. W. MacDonald, J. R. Sands and M. L. Silverstein (1995) ‘Vulnerability to delusions over time in schizophrenia and affective disorders’, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 21:95–109; M. Harrow, F. Rattenbury and F. Stoll (1988) ‘Schizophrenic delusions: an analysis of their persistence, of related premorbid ideas and three major dimensions’, in T. F. Oltmanns and B. A. Maher (eds.), Delusional Beliefs. New York: John Wiley, pp. 184–211.

  36. P. A. Garety (1985) ‘Delusions: problems in definitions and measurement’, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 58: 25–34.

  37. G. E. Berrios (1991) ‘Delusions as “wrong beliefs”: a conceptual history’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 159 (Supplement 14): 6–13.

  38. I got this quote from 5,000 Gems of Wit and Wisdom, by L. Peter, London: Treasure Press. My efforts to find the original source failed, but it was too good to pass up.

  39. S. G. Brush (1974) ‘Should the history of science be rated X?’ Science, 183: 1164–72.

  40. G. N. Gilbert and M. Mulkay (1984) Opening Pandora’s Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists’ Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  41. G. Kelly (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs (Vol. 1). New York: Norton.

  42. R. P. Bentall (1990) ‘The syndromes and symptoms of psychosis: or why you can’t play 20 questions with the concept of schizophrenia and hope to win’, in R. P. Bentall (ed.), Reconstructing Schizophrenia. London: Routledge,
pp. 23–60.

  43. K. Popper (1963) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge.

  44. J. S. B. T. Evans (1989) Bias in Human Reasoning: Causes and Consequences. Hove: Erlbaum; R. S. Nickerson (1998) ‘Confirmation bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises’, Review of General Psychology, 2: 175–220.

  45. K. Moser, V. Gadenne and J. Schroeder (1988) ‘Under what conditions does confirmation seeking obstruct scientific progress?’ Psychological Review, 95: 572–4.

  46. S. Schneider (1998) ‘Peace and paranoia’, in J. H. Berke, S. Pierides, A. Sabbadini and S. Schneider (eds.), Even Paranoids have Enemies: New Perspectives on Paranoia and Persecution. London: Routledge, pp. 203–18.

  47. D. Mayerhoff, D. Pelta, C. Valentino and M. Chakos (1991) ‘Real-life basis for a patient’s paranoia’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 148: 682–3.

  48. W. G. Niederland (1959) ‘Schreber: father and son’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 28: 151–69; and Niederland (1960) ‘Schreber’s father’, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 8:492–9. See also M. Schatzman (1973) Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family. London: Penguin Books.

  49. Z. Lothane (1992) In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.

  50. J. Mirowsky and C. E. Ross (1983) ‘Paranoia and the structure of powerlessness’, American Sociological Review, 48: 228–39.

  51. T. Harris (1987) ‘Recent developments in the study of life events in relation to psychiatric and physical disorders’, in B. Cooper (ed.), Psychiatric Epidemiology: Progress and Prospects, London: Croom Helm, pp. 81–102.

  52. R. Day, J. A. Neilsen, A. Korten, G. Ernberg, K. C. Dube, J. Gebhart, A. Jablensky, C. Leon, A. Marsella, M. Olatawura, N. Sartorius, E. Stromgren, R. Takahashi, N. Wig and L. C. Wynne (1987) ‘Stressful life events preceding the onset of acute schizophrenia: a cross-national study from the World Health Organization’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 11: 123–206.

  53. T. Fuchs (1999) ‘Life events in late paraphrenia and depression’, Psychopathology, 32: 60–9.

  54. D. Bhugra, J. Leff, R. Mallett, G. Der, B. Corridan and S. Rudge (1997) ‘Incidence and outcome of schizophrenia in Whites, African-Caribbeans and Asians in London’, Psychological Medicine, 27: 791–8; G. Harrison, D. Owens, A. Holton, D. Neilsen and D. Boot (1988) ‘A prospective study of severe mental disorder in Afro-Caribbean patients’, Psychological Medicine, 18: 643–57.

  55. B. A. Maher (1974) ‘Delusional thinking and perceptual disorder’, Journal of Individual Psychology, 30: 98–113; B. A. Maher (1988) ‘Anomalous experience and delusional thinking: the logic of explanations’, in Oltmanns and Maher (eds.), Delusional Beliefs, op. cit.; B. A. Maher (1992) ‘Models and methods for the study of reasoning in delusions’, Revue Européenne de Psychologie Appliquée, 42: 97–102.

  56. B. A. Maher and J. S. Ross (1984) ‘Delusions’, in H. E. Adams and P. Suther (eds.), Comprehensive Handbook of Psychopathology. New York: Plenum.

  57. A. F. Cooper and A.R. Curry (1976) ‘The pathology of deafness in the paranoid and affective psychoses of later life’, Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine, 20: 97–105; A. F. Cooper, R. F. Garside and D. W. Kay (1976) ‘A comparison of deaf and non-deaf patients with paranoid and affective psychoses’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 129: 532–8; D. W. Kay, A. F. Cooper, R. F. Garside and M. Roth (1976) ‘The differentiation of paranoid from affective psychoses by patients’ premorbid characteristics’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 129: 207–15.

  58. P. G. Zimbardo, S. M. Andersen and L. G. Kabat (1981) ‘Induced hearing deficit generates experimental paranoia’, Science, 212: 1529–31.

  59. N. C. Moore (1981) ‘Is paranoid illness associated with sensory defects in the elderly?’ Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 25: 69–74; J. A. G. Watt (1985) ‘Hearing and premorbid personality in paranoid states’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 142: 1453–5.

  60. Capgras and Reboul-Lachaux, ‘L’illusion des “sosies” ’, op. cit.

  61. See, for example, Enoch and Trethowan, Uncommon Psychiatric Syndromes, op. cit.

  62. H. D. Ellis and K. W. Pauw (1994) ‘The cognitive neuropsychiatric origins of the capgras delusion’, in A.S. David and J.C. Cutting (eds.), The Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia. Hove: Erlbaum.

  63. H. D. Ellis and A. W. Young (1990) ‘Accounting for delusional misidentifications’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 157: 239–48.

  64. H. D. Ellis and M. B. Lewis (2001) ‘Capgras delusion: a window on face recognition’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5: 149–56.

  65. H. D. Ellis, A. W. Young, A. H. Quale and K. W. de Paul (1997) ‘Reduced autonomic responses to faces in Capgras delusion’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 264: 1085–92. See, also, a more detailed study of face recognition in a single case of Capgras syndrome, reported in H. D. Ellis, M. B. Lewis, H. F. Moselhy, and A. W. Young (2000) ‘Automatic without autonomic responses to familiar faces: differential components of covert face recognition in a case of Capgras delusion’, Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 5: 255–69. For an independent replication of this finding, see W. Hirstein and V. S. Ramachandran (1997) ‘Capgras syndrome: a novel probe for understanding neural representation of identity and familiarity of persons’, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 264: 437–44.

  66. A. W. Young (1994) ‘Recognition and reality’, in E. M. R. Critchley (ed.), The Neurological Boundaries of Reality. London: Farrand Press.

  67. L. LaRusso (1978) ‘Sensitivity of paranoid patients to nonverbal cues’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87: 463–71.

  68. P. J. Davis and M. G. Gibson (2000) ‘Recognition of posed and genuine facial expressions of emotion in paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenia’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109: 445–50.

  69. W. G. Johnson, J. M. Ross and M. A. Mastria (1977) ‘Delusional behavior: an attributional analysis of development and modification’, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86: 421–6.

  70. L. J. Chapman and J. P. Chapman (1988) ‘The genesis of delusions’, in Oltmanns and Maher (eds.), Delusional Beliefs, op. cit.

  71. S. Escher, M. Romme, A. Buiks, P. Delespaul and J. van Os (2002) ‘Formation of delusional ideation in adolescents hearing voices: a prospective study’, American Journal of Medical Genetics (Neuropsychiatric Genetics), 14: 913–20.

  72. L. P. Ullmann and L. Krasner (1969) A Psychological Approach to Abnormal Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

  73. R. P. Bentall and S. Kaney (1989) ‘Content-specific information processing and persecutory delusions: an investigation using the emotional Stroop test’, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 62: 355–64. For replications of this finding, see: C. F. Fear, H. Sharp and D. Healy (1996) ‘Cognitive processes in delusional disorder’, British Journal of Psychiatry, 168: 61–7; and P. Kinderman (1994) ‘Attentional bias, persecutory delusions and the self concept’, British Journal of Medical Psychology, 67: 53–66.

  74. J. M. G. Williams, A. Mathews and C. MacLeod (1996) ‘The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology’, Psychological Bulletin, 120: 3–24.

  75. K. M. Leafhead, A. W. Young and T. K. Szulecka (1996) ‘Delusions demand attention’, Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 1: 5–16.

  76. S. Kaney, M. Wolfenden, M. E. Dewey and R. P. Bentall (1992) ‘Persecutory delusions and the recall of threatening and non-threatening propositions’, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 31: 85–7. See also R. P. Bentall, S. Kaney and K. Bowen-Jones(1995)‘Persecutory delusions and recall of threat-related, depression-related and neutral words’, Cognitive Therapy and Research, 19: 331–43.

  77. M. Phillips and A. S. David (1997) ‘Abnormal visual scan paths: a psychophysiological marker of delusions in schizophrenia’, Schizophrenia Research, 29: 235–54; M. Phillips and A. S. David (1997) ‘Visual scan paths are abnormal in deluded schizophrenics’, Neuropsychologia, 35: 99–105.

  78. C. D. Frith (1994) ‘Theory of mind in schizophrenia’, in David and Cutting (eds.), T
he Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia, op. cit., pp. 147–61; C. D. Frith (1992) The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

  79. C. D. Frith and R. Corcoran (1996) ‘Exploring “theory of mind” in people with schizophrenia’, Psychological Medicine, 26: 521–30.

  80. R. Corcoran, C. D. Frith and G. Mercer (1995) ‘Schizophrenia, symptomatology and social inference: investigating “theory of mind” in people with schizophrenia’, Schizophrenia Research, 17: 5–13. See also R. Corcoran, C. Cahill and C. D. Frith (1997) ‘The appreciation of visual jokes in people with schizophrenia: a study of “mentalizing” ability’, Schizophrenia Research, 24: 319–27.

  81. Y. Sarfati, M.C. Hardy-Bayle, C. Besche and D. Widlocher (1997) ‘Attributions of intentions to others in people with schizophrenia: a non-verbal exploration with comic strips’, Schizophrenia Research, 25: 199–209; Y. Sarfati, M. C. Hardy-Bayle, E. Brunet and D. Widlocher (1999) ‘Investigating theory of mind in schizophrenia: influence of verbalization in disorganized and non-disorganized patients’, Schizophrenia Research, 37: 183–90; Y. Sarfati, J. Nadel, J. F. Chevalier and D. Widlocher (1997) ‘Attribution of mental states to others by schizophrenic patients’, Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2: 1–17.