paranoia
Paranoia is a thought process thought to be 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. Historically, this characterization was used to describe any
delusional state.
 The word paranoia comes from the Greek
"παράνοια" (paranoia),
"madness" and
that from "παρά" (para), "beside, by"
and+ "νόος" (noos), "mind". The term
was used to describe a mental illness in which a delusional belief is the sole
or most prominent feature. In 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 he is an important
religious figure would be classified by Kraepelin as having 'pure paranoia'.
According to Phelan, M. Padraig, W. Stern, J (2000) paranoia
and paraphrenia are debated entities that were detached from dementia praecox by
Kraepelin, who explained paranoia as a continuous systematized delusion arising
much later in life with no presence of either hallucinations or a deteriorating
course, paraphrenia as an identical syndrome to paranoia but with
hallucinations. 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,
In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, paranoia is
diagnosed in the form of:
- paranoid personality disorder
- paranoid schizophrenia (a subtype of schizophrenia)
- the persecutory type of delusional disorder, which is
also called "querulous paranoia" when the focus is to remedy some
injustice by legal action.
According to clinical psychologist P. J. McKenna, "As a noun, paranoia denotes a
disorder which has been argued in and out of existence, and whose clinical
features, course, boundaries, and virtually every other aspect of which is
controversial. Employed as an adjective, paranoid has become attached to a
diverse set of presentations, from paranoid schizophrenia, through paranoid
depression, to paranoid personality�not to mention a motley collection of
paranoid 'psychoses', 'reactions', and 'states'�and this is to restrict
discussion to functional disorders. Even when abbreviated down to the prefix
para-, the term crops up causing trouble as the contentious but stubbornly
persistent concept of paraphrenia."
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