Delusional disorder, once termed paranoia, was an important diagnosis in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and only in 1987 was it reintroduced into modern psychiatric diagnosis after being subsumed with schizophrenia. This book provides a comprehensive review of delusional disorder for psychiatrists and other clinicians. Beginning with the emergence of the concept of delusional disorder, the book goes on to detail its manifold presentations, differential diagnosis and treatment. Many instructive case histories are provided, illustrating manifestations of the various subtypes of delusional disorder, and related conditions in the paranoid spectrum. This is the most wide-ranging and authoritative text on the subject to have appeared for many years, and the first to suggest, based on the author's extensive experience, that the category of delusional disorder should contain not one but several conditions. It also emphasizes that, contrary to traditional belief, delusional disorder is a treatable illness.

The book is an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of delusions. It brings together recent work in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology and psychiatry, offering a comprehensive review of the philosophical issues raised by the psychology of normal and abnormal cognition.

2018 Christy Award winner! By March of Owen Edmonds’s senior year, eleven students at Masonville High School have committed suicide. Amid the media frenzy and chaos, Owen tries to remain levelheaded—until he endures his own near-death experience and wakes to a distressing new reality. The people around him suddenly appear to be shackled and enslaved. Owen frantically seeks a cure for what he thinks are crazed hallucinations, but his delusions become even more sinister. An army of hideous, towering beings, unseen by anyone but Owen, are preying on his girlfriend and classmates, provoking them to self-destruction. Owen eventually arrives at a mind-bending conclusion: he’s not imagining the evil—everyone else is blind to its reality. He must warn and rescue those he loves . . . but this proves to be no simple mission. Will he be able to convince anyone to believe him before it’s too late? Owen’s heart-pounding journey through truth and delusion will force him to reconsider everything he believes. He both longs for and fears the answers to questions that are quickly becoming too dangerous to ignore.

In this hilarious and inspirational memoir, Ross Mathews -- best known as "Ross the Intern" from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno -- chronicles his life growing up as an atypical kid in a small Northwestern farm town to living as an atypical adult in Los Angeles, to eventually being his loud, proud, apologetically genuine self on national television. As a young kid growing up in a farm town, Ross Mathews might as well have wished for a pet unicorn or a calorie-free cookie tree to grow in his front yard. Either of those far-fetched fantasies would have been more likely to come true than his real dream: working in television in Hollywood, California. Seriously, that stuff just doesn't happen to people like Ross. But guess what? It totally did. Now, with his first book, Ross takes us inside his journey as a super-fan, revealing the most embarrassing and hilarious moments of his small-town life and big-city adventures. From learning to swear like a hardened trucker to that time in high school when had to face down the most frightening opponent of all (his girlfriend's lady bits), Ross holds nothing back. Oh, then there's his surprisingly shady past involving the cutest pair of plus-sized women's pajama bottoms, deliciously dangerous pot butter, and embezzled sandwiches. And, of course, how he's managed to turn an obsession with pop-culture into one-on-one interactions with celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, Tiffani-Amber Theissen, Madonna, Michelle Kwan, and countless more without ever having a single restraining order issued against him. Infused with Ross's trademark humor, unique voice, and total honesty, Man Up! is a mission statement for anyone who doesn't fit the mold. His hasn't been the most traditional way to build a career in Hollywood, but Ross has somehow managed to make his mark without ever compromising who he is. He is as serious about this as he is about Golden Girls trivia: You don't need to change who you are to achieve your dreams (although there's nothing wrong with a makeover every now and then). You just need to Man Up!

A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2021 A Next Big Idea Club Best Nonfiction of 2021 From the New York Times best-selling author and host of Hidden Brain comes a thought-provoking look at the role of self-deception in human flourishing. Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being. The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter. Filled with powerful personal stories and drawing on new insights in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Useful Delusions offers a fascinating tour of what it really means to be human.

The authors offer cogent reviews of the literature pertaining to the formation and maintenance of delusions, but the most substantial parts of the monograph expound the empirical inquiries which they and their colleagues have carried out in recent years. Most of the research has been published elsewhere, but such is the relevance of the experiments cited to the whole schema that the monograph has unique value. It is a synthesis which portrays the contribution to date of cognitive science to the biology and psychopathology of delusional thinking, and convincingly demonstrates that this way of looking at things has a considerable future. There are important implications for therapy as well as for hypothesis formulation. The monograph is attractively written, and the authors present their claims with exemplary modesty. The whole tenor of their approach gives weight to the conviction that here we have a story that must be taken seriously. It is a significant book, and I warmly commend it to all those with an interest in the future of psychopathology, and especially to psychiatrists who wish to advance their understanding of mental states and avoid stagnating with outworn dogma." - Robert Cawley, University of London in British Journal of Psychiatry Delusions are a key symptom of psychosis and yet there is no single book which considers delusions from a psychological perspective. In part this is because the syndrome of schizophrenia has captured the attention of many workers, and in part because delusions, as private mental phenomena, are not well suited to purely behavioural or observational methods of enquiry. For the past two decades, however, cognitive psychology has been in its ascendancy and delusions, as beliefs, are particularly amenable to investigation applying cognitive concepts and methods. Within this framework, it is possible to consider continuities between delusional and ordinary beliefs, as well as to seek to identify differences. This book, therefore, uniquely presents a psychological model of delusions, employing the neglected strategy of single symptom research and the tools of cognitive psychology

We are all more primitive and irrational than we care to acknowledge, says Dr. Leonard Shengold in this profound and eloquent book. We all suffer to some degree from delusions--vestiges of infantile mental functioning that continue into adult life and that at times of crisis manifest themselves in narcissistic thoughts of omnipotence, immortality, or perfection. Dr. Shengold argues that we can never eliminate these delusions of everyday life, but we can lessen their effect if we acknowledge, or "own", them. He asserts that insight into what we are and what has happened to us is a prerequisite for caring about others and for accepting the transient conditions of life--both necessary to attain happiness. Dr. Shengold discusses delusions we all experience as well as delusions associated with paranoia, perversions, being in love, and identification with delusional parents. He illustrates his ideas by referring to the lives and works of such literary figures as Shakespeare, Swift, Tolstoy, Pascal, Rilke, Randall Jarrell, Dickens, Hardy, and, especially, Samuel Butler. Dr. Shengold also brings in relevant clinical material because, as he points out, delusions of everyday life are at the heart of misunderstanding and conflict in life and of resistance to change in psychological treatment. These delusions must be attenuated if therapy is to be successful.