The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)

[122] Illusions and hallucinations must both be distinguished from delusions. A delusion is a false opinion about a matter of fact, which need not necessarily involve, though it often does involve, false perceptions of sensible things. We may, for example, have religious delusions, medical delusions, delusions about our own importance, about other peoples' characters, etc., ad libitum. The delusions of the insane are apt to affect certain typical forms, often very hard to explain. But in many cases they are certainly theories which the patients invent to account for their abnormal bodily sensations. In other cases they are due to hallucinations of hearing and of sight. Dr. Clouston (Clinical Lectures on Mental Disease, lecture iii ad fin.) gives the following special delusions as having been found in about a hundred melancholy female patients who were afflicted in this way. There were delusions of

general persecution;

being destitute;

general suspicion;

being followed by the police;

being poisoned;

being very wicked;

being killed;

impending death;

being conspired against;

impending calamity;

being defrauded;

the soul being lost;

being preached against in church;

having no stomach;

being pregnant;

having no inside;

having a bone in the throat;

having neither stomach nor brains;

having lost much money;

being covered with vermin;

being unfit to live;

letters being written about her;

that she will not recover;

property being stolen;

that she is to be murdered;

her children being killed;

that she is to be boiled alive;

having committed theft;

that she is to be starved;

the legs being made of glass;

that the flesh is boiling;

having horns on the head;

that the head is severed

being chloroformed;

from the body;

having committed murder;

that children are burning;

fear of being hanged;

that murders take place around;