Paranoia // (adjective: paranoid //) is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself (e.g. "Everyone is out to get me"). Paranoia is distinct from phobias, which also involve irrational fear, but usually no blame. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, an incident most people would view as an accident or coincidence, a paranoid person might believe was intentional.
The word paranoia comes from the Greek παράνοια (paranoia), "madness", and that from παρά (para), "beside, by" and νοῦς (noos), "mind". The term was used to describe a mental illness in which a delusional belief is the sole or most prominent feature. In this 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.
Use in modern psychiatry
- 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."
- Borderline personality disorder
- Conspiracy theory
- Delusions of reference
- Fusion paranoia
- Ideas of reference
- Narcissistic personality disorder
- Paranoid personality disorder
- Paranoid social cognition
- 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
- Sant, P. (2005). Delusional disorder. Punjab: Panjab University Chandigarh. 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. ISBN 0-684-80285-6.