:: dreadful dreams :: or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
:: Thursday, March 23, 2006 ::
Delusional misidentification, are these my things?
A 55-year-old woman with grandmal epilepsy was found to have a very rare form of delusional misidentification syndrome in which she believed that her sons were replacing her possessions with substitute imitations. What makes this case especially weird is that there was no evidence of dementia, nothing wrong with her memory and brain scans revealed no signs of injury or abnormality. Still, whenever she bought something new, she soon felt that it had been replaced.
There are many delusional misidentification syndromes. The most common form is Capragas syndrome, the belief that people you know (usually relatives or spouse) have been replaced by identical impostors. A variation on the theme is Fregoli delusion, the belief that different people are actually the same person in disguise. But delusional misidentification can get even weirder, e.g. Intermetamorphosis, the belief that different people swap identities with each other while maintaining the same appearance, or the delusion of subjective doubles, that a doppelganger of the person is performing independent actions of their own free will; known as clonal pluralization, when a person thinks there are more than one of them in existence. This case would fall under the delusion of inanimate doubles, that is unless her sons are in fact trying to gaslight her, which would be hilarious.
A variant of Capgras syndrome with delusional conviction of inanimate doubles in a patient with grandmal epilepsy, Blackwell Synergy: Acta Neuropsychiatrica
Delusional misidentification syndrome, Wiki
:: alexei 12:01 AM {0 comments} [+] ::
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