Clinical delusions are difficult to investigate in the laboratory because they co-occur with other symptoms and with intellectual impairment. Partly for these reasons, researchers have recently begun to use hypnosis with neurologically intact people in order to model clinical delusions. In this paper we describe striking analogies between the behavior of patients with a clinical delusion of mirrored self misidentification, and the behavior of highly hypnotizable subjects who receive a hypnotic suggestion to see a stranger when they look in the mirror. Based on these analogies, we argue that the use of hypnosis is a reliable method to investigate the surface features of clinical delusions. But to what extent can hypnosis successfully recreate delusions? Can it also contribute to a better understanding of delusion formation? Although clinical delusions and hypnotically induced beliefs are different in etiology, some analogies can be identified in the underlying processes that characterise them, based on the two-factor theory of delusion formation.
271
Views
8
CrossRef citations
Altmetric
be0ef6915d1b2200a248b7195d01ef22
research article
Can we recreate delusions in the laboratory?
Pages 109-131
Published online: 24 Jun 2011
Original Articles
Can we recreate delusions in the laboratory?
People also read
research article
“That's not my arm”: A hypnotic analogue of somatoparaphreniaAmanda J. Barnier et al.
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis
Published online: 20 Nov 2010
research article
Abductive inference and delusional belief