Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. In the original Greek, παράνοια (paranoia) simply means madness (para = outside; nous = mind). Historically, this characterization was used to describe any delusional state.

Tin foil hats have been used by some paranoids as a defense against mind control

Mathematician Kurt Gödel starved himself to death, when his wife was hospitalized and he refused to eat anything cooked by anyone else, afraid of being poisoned

[edit] History

The term paranoia was used to describe a mental illness in which a delusional belief is the sole or most prominent feature. In his original attempt at classifying different forms of mental illness, Kraepelin used the term pure paranoia to describe a condition where a delusion was present, but without any apparent deterioration in intellectual abilities and without any of the other features of dementia praecox, the condition later renamed schizophrenia. Notably, in his definition, the belief does not have to be persecutory to be classified as paranoid, so any number of delusional beliefs can be classified as paranoia. For example, a person who has the sole delusional belief that they are an important religious figure would be classified by Kraepelin as having 'pure paranoia'. Even at the present time, a delusion need not be suspicious or fearful to be classified as paranoid. A person might be diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic without delusions of persecution, simply because their delusions refer mainly to themselves, such as believing they are a CIA agent or a famous member of royalty.

[edit] Use in psychiatry

In modern psychiatry, paranoia is diagnosed in the form of:^[1]

• paranoid personality disorder
• paranoid schizophrenia (a subtype of schizophrenia)
• persecutory delusions (a subtype of delusional disorder).

[edit] Paranoia v phobias

This section requires expansion.

Paranoia and phobias are separate psychological phenomena but there are associations, as a paranoid person is more like to have phobias than a non-paranoid person and vice versa.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (February 2008)

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Farrell, John. Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Cornell University Press, 2006).
• Freeman, D. & Garety, P.A. (2004) Paranoia: The Psychology of Persecutory Delusions. Hove: Psychology Press. ISBN 1-84169-522-X
• Igmade (Stephan Trüby et al., eds.), 5 Codes: Architecture, Paranoia and Risk in Times of Terror", Birkhäuser 2006. ISBN 3-7643-7598-1
• Kantor, Martin. (2004) Understanding Paranoia: A Guide for Professionals, Families, and Sufferers. Westport: Praeger Press. ISBN 0-275-98152-5
• Munro, A. (1999) Delusional disorder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58180-X
• Sims, A. (2002) Symptoms in the mind: An introduction to descriptive psychopathology (3rd edition). Edinburgh: Elsevier Science Ltd. ISBN 0-7020-2627-1
• Siegel, Ronald K. (1994) Whispers: The Voices of Paranoia. New York: Crown.