From Damn Interesting:
A person with Capgras’ Syndrome suffers from the delusion that one or more of their close friends or family members have been replaced with exact duplicates, and they cannot be shaken from this belief in spite of an otherwise clean bill of mental health. In some instances, the person believes that they themselves are, in whole or in part, a duplicate. Unlike the paranoia expected from such a condition, there is never a motive assigned for the appearance of the duplicates – the patients do not believe someone is “out to get them,” but they are at a loss for an explanation why anyone would want to replace their loved ones.
This odd misperception is named after the French psychiatrist Jean Marie Joseph Capgras, who described the case of a Madame M. in 1923. The woman insisted that identical-looking persons had taken the place of her family. Over time her delusion expanded to include neighbors, friends and acquaintances. But Madame M. never bothered to get to know these impostors because it was her belief that each one regularly left to make room for the next double. In all, she eventually claimed to have had more than eighty husbands.
Comments
9 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.Is that where my father got the expression,”Are you new??” when I made what I considered a reasonable request for some popular material object?
The other day somebody stole everything in my apartment and replaced it with an exact replica… When my roommate came home I said, “Roommate, someone stole everything in our apartment and replaced it with an exact replica.” He looked at me and said, “Do I know you?”
How, in fact, do we know that Madame M is wrong?
As the grandson of a famous doctor credited with great achievements in gastrointestinal medicine, I think naming discoveries after yourself is a seriously bad idea.
Sincerely,
Dan Diarrhea
I saw a documentary that covered this (amongst other, medically unrelated, but seemingly related) mental problems. A doctor with an Indian (Asian) sounding name seems to have been the one who made a significant discovery how how the problem arises. He had studied a young man who was afflicted with this problem after a terrible traffic accident that caused major head trauma.
The good doctor discovered that the young man had no problem if he spoke to his parents over the phone — only in person. The clue to this syndrome is that that pathways between the logical and emotional centers of the brain, and that of the ears and eyes, are connected in different ways. And that his lack of emotional reaction (seeing that this paths had been severed in the accident) when seeing his parents or his old room overruled his logical conclusions…
Damned if I can remember the programme — it covered a lot of other, extremely interesting problems too.
I’m rapidly beginning to agree with Phil who commented back on January 28th:
A what point do you stop naming new mental disorders and start saying “look love, you’re clearly f*cking nuts, now swallow this pill.â€
Amen.
lol @ Steven Wright
Even “f*cking nuts” has to be categorized and named so we can keep up…
@Eel Feather: “Secrets of the Mind” is probably the documentary you’re looking for. I just watched a bunch of snippets from this show for a cognitive processes course. Very interesting stuff.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2812mind.html