The 12 most curious and shocking types of delusions.

Dysfunctional alterations in interpreting what is happening around us.

Delusions are a phenomenon that for decades has aroused the interest of psychiatrists and psychologists. After all, for a long time we have believed that we tend to analyze the information that comes to us through our senses in a rational way, and that if we fall into delusion, it will be because our eyes or ears have betrayed us.

However, the existence of delusions demonstrates that we can interpret things in a profoundly erroneous way even when our senses provide us with perfectly reliable information.

Bizarre delusions: alterations in interpreting reality

Unlike hallucinations, in which we perceive alterations 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 to say, the way in which reality is interpreted.that is to say, the way in which reality is interpreted.

To understand this idea, nothing better than to see some examples of the most curious and extreme delusions of which we have of which there is evidence in pathological cases.

Types of delusions (and their characteristics)

One way of classifying delusions is to use the categories of non-pathological delusions and bizarre delusions.. Here are some examples belonging to the second category: delusions that are so bizarre that they go against what we know about what reality is like and are extremely implausible even before their veracity has been tested.

Cotard's Syndrome

People with Cotard's Syndrome present one of the strangest delusions known to man: they believe they are dead, physically or spiritually.physically or spiritually. This delirium can take many forms: some people believe that they are literally rotting inside, while others simply believe that the plane of reality in which they live is that of the dead.

Usually, this type of delirium is accompanied by abulia, i.e., the pathological absence of motivation or initiative. After all, there are few things that can be meaningful for someone who thinks he is dead and somehow feels that he does not belong "to this world".

• If you are interested in learning more about this syndrome, you can read more about it in this article.

2. Enemy Complex

People who manifest Enemy Complex hold the delusional idea that they are surrounded by enemies who are looking for an opportunity to hurt them. who are looking for an opportunity to hurt them physically, psychologically or symbolically. Thus, a good part of the actions of others will be interpreted as acts directed at oneself; scratching one's nose may be a signal for another enemy to prepare to attack us, looking in our direction may be part of an espionage strategy, etc. This is a belief related to persecution mania.

3. Thought diffusion

People who hold this form of delusion believe that their thoughts are audible to others, i.e., that they produce waves of sound waves.that is to say, that they produce sound waves that can be registered by ears and electronic devices just as any noise would. Of course, this delusional idea produces great frustration and anxiety, since it leads to "mental policing" and self-censorship even though one does not have total control over what crosses one's mind.

4. Thought reading

In this type of bizarre delirium the person believes that others (or a portion of people, regardless of whether they are near or far away) can read his thoughts through a kind of telepathic contact. through a kind of telepathic contact. This belief often results in the appearance of rituals created to avoid this supposed thought-reading: repeating "protective words" over and over again, wrapping one's head in something, etc.

5. Thought stealing

People expressing this delirium believe that someone is stealing some ideas from them just after these are created. It is a sensation similar to the phenomenon of "having something on the tip of the tongue", although in this case it is perceived as a step-by-step process: first the thought is created and then it disappears to some unknown place.

6. Insertion of thought

In this delusion, the belief is held that part of the thoughts that circulate in one's head have been introduced into one's mind by an external entity, in a similar way to what is presented in the movie Inception.This is similar to what is presented in the movie Inception.

7. Capgras Syndrome

One of the symptoms of this rare syndrome is the belief that someone important in one's life has been replaced by another person by another person practically identical to the previous one. Patients with this strange delirium believe that only they are aware of the deception and that the impostor has managed to make everyone else unaware of the substitution.

Thus, although the person recognizes in the other person's features the objective features that serve to identify someone's face, this information does not produce the normal emotional reaction.

• If you want to know more about Capgras Syndrome, you can read this article.

8. Fregoli Syndrome

This syndrome is associated with a type of delirium similar to the previous one. As in the cases of Capgras, here too there is a form of delusional false identification: in Fregoli Syndrome the person believes that everyone else, or a good part of the people around him/her, is in reality a single character who is constantly changing appearance. This belief easily leads to other delusions based on the idea that someone is chasing us.

9. Delusions of grandeur

People with delusions of grandeur sincerely believe that they have qualities that are far above what would be expected of a human beingThey have the ability to make everyone happy, to always offer the best conversations ever, and so on. Any action they perform, 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. Reducplicative Paramnesia

People with this kind of paramnesia believe that one place or landscape has been replaced by another, or that the same place has been replaced by another one.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 this place is actually the kindergarten in Buenos Aires where I used to go during my first years of life.

• An example of this strange delirium can be found in the case explained in this article.

11. Delirium of control

Whoever presents delirium of control believes that he/she is a kind of puppet in the hands of a superior force that controls him/her.. This can be expressed by saying that there is someone who is possessing one's own body, or that one is receiving a series of instructions telepathically and is obliged to comply with them.

12. Delirium from The Truman Show

In the movie The Truman Show, Jim Carrey plays a man who has been raised on a gigantic television set in the form of a city, surrounded by cameras and actors playing a role, without him realizing it. This work of fiction was the inspiration for the brothers Ian and Joel Gold, philosopher and psychiatrist, who in 2008 used this name to designate cases of people who believed they were living in a televised fiction in which the only real character were in which they are the only real character. This delirium presents characteristics of delirium of grandeur and persecutory mania.

Bibliographical references:

• American Psychiatric Association (APA). (2002). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR.Barcelona: Masson.
• Valiente, C. (2002): Hallucinations and delusions. Madrid: Síntesis.