Psychosis and the Delusional States - Essay Example

Psychosis and delusional s, and relation with normal anomalous experiences Psychosis can be loosely described as chaotic thinking resulting from severe disconnection from reality; psychotic episodes can be short lived, also known as micro-episodes which can last just a few hours or days and are mostly stressed related (Gelder, 2005). These are often manifested in patients of stress related disorders such as borderline or schizophrenia, however, persistent and acute psychosis can last as long as months, years at a time and in some cases when not treated a lifetime. Quintessentially, psychotics are unable to draw a line between their inner fantasy and the reality in the external world. While they are fully aware of the people objects and events in the outside world, they confuse it with what is generated in their mind making it difficult for them to grasp full-fledged entities. Psychotic individuals for example those suffering from acute Narcissistic Personality Disorder tend to view object as symbolic introjects which the treat as if they are functional automata and in some cases an extension of themselves(Bowden, 1993; Brundage, 1983). While light episodes of psychosis involve minor and temporal delusions, full-fledged psychotics are often incapable of reasoning on the same level as normal people and even in the face of objective evidence, they will steadfastly refuse to confront anything that disconnect form their version of the truth no matter how illogical it is. Given that delusions are some of the primary symptoms of psychosis, it is important that an understanding of the term in its cotemporary and historical sense is established before commencing with the rest of the paper. A modern definition of delusion describes it as a belief that is held on inadequate grounds which are contradictory to the possessor’s education (Chadwick 1997; David 1990), cultural background but which they belief with and an extraordinary degree of subjective certainty (Sims, 1995; OTP, 2006). The notion that delusions are John Locke (2004) first proposed a consequence of a troubled perception (Porter, 1987). Campbell, (2001) on the other hand, proposes that delusions result from anomalous experiences and account which is supported by (Maher, 1999) who held that delusions are produced by what would conventionally be considered as normal reasoning when applied to perceptual experiences (Amador and David, 1998). Fundamentally, a delusion in the modern understating represents the most logical reaction to unfamiliar perception information, which results from an inadequacy in the individual’s sense of perception (Francisco and Anthony, 1998). For instance, paranoid delusions which are a common symptom of psychosis can be a result of the victims having a perceptual bias towards certain objects that makes them believe that the environment is providing constant sensory warnings of a threat (Philip et al. 2009). Therefore, they will be suspicious of everyone around them and may be convince that someone is following them or trying to kill or harm them in some way. However, Individual reactions to this perceptions and sensation are what essentially differentiate between psychotic delusional and normal anomalous dilution characteristics (James, 1950). Nevertheless, there is a second step to the diagnosis of psychosis delusion since there have been found to be cases where people hold such perceptual biases or deficits yet they are not considered delusional. This second model proposes that for delusion to be complete, a cognitive deficit must exist; this is demonstrated by an examination and comparison of people suffering from bilateral damage in the frontal robe with Capgras patients. The latter tend to experience a lack of familiarity when they encounter close relatives and will believe that they are imposters, conversely, the former, while conceding lack of familiarity in a similar scenario will however understand it is their perception not the person who has changed thus will not claim they are an imposter. In summary, it can be said that while step one theories base their diagnosis of delusion on one neuro-perceptual deficit, variant depending on the delusions inherent nature two step theories require an additional cognitive element within the neural system that construct and evaluates beliefs. Anomalous experiences on the other hand are unusual experiences that occur to people who would ordinarily not be thought of as psychotic or delusional, these include hallucinatory experiences that often occur even without the presence of triggers such as fatigue or intoxication. Maher believed that anomalous experiences are not only necessary but also sufficient to account for the formation and occurrence of delusions, however, later psychologist have disagreed with the key premise of the binary construction. Despite this, there have also been several neuropsychological theories postdating him that have upheld the connection between anomalous experience and delusions (Davies et al., 2001; Ellis et al., 1997; Langdon and Coltheart, 2000). In addition, although present-day cognitive philosophies are not unambiguous in that anomalous perceptual experience is essential for delusions to transpire, they often stress that it is a nonetheless central component (Freeman, Kuipers and Garety, 2004: Garety and Hemsley, 1994). Hallucinations are an example of enormous delusions, there are several types but for purposes of this paper attention will be paid to the auditory ones (Bentall and Slade, 1988). While these are a common symptom of people suffering schizophrenia, normal people have often been found to have experienced them at some point their life (Bayne and Fernández, 2011). A study by Bentall et al. (2001) found that in a population of 150 male students 15% of them claimed they have at someone had the illusion of hearing a voice when in reality there was none. A study carried out in found that 14% out of 1800 subjects reported hearing either articulate or inarticulate audio hallucinations; Posey and Losch claimed that based on empirical research over 10% of their subject had experienced this hallucination (Green and McCrery, 1975). Another example of a normal anomalous experience is known as synesthesia, it is characterized by a series of neurological conditions that impact the sensory cognitive pathways resulting in automatic involuntary experiences. The phenomenal is often described as sensing idea in which one’s cognitive senses are mixed up and often producing contradictory impressions (Richard, & David, 2009). For example, there is color-graphemic synesthesia in which one associates letter and numbers with certain colors. A systhetsist may perceive letter “i” as red in color and every time he come across it will evoke the color, he is no more capable of not perceiving it this the a normal person is of thinking of letter “o” and not thinking or a round shape. In psychotic delusional individuals, synesthesia is manifested in a radically different way it can range from making them self-destructive or a dangerous to others. Owing to the contradictory experience and perception say, between numbers colors and sound, they could end up being confused and frustrated as well as paranoid. When they act on these perceptions in rational way, they may try to defend themselves from the perceived threats or change what they seen into what they think they should be seeing. In normal anomalous situation, the individual often use synesthesia to inspire art, in fact normal artists even try to create art that looks like it has been influence by synesthesia. There are over 50 types of synesthesia although very little research has been carried out on them and it is estimated that there could be as many as one in every 23 people being synesthesiasts. Lawrie Reznek attempts to prove the fact those delusions are rational reaction to irrational perception in a cases study where he uses Jason, an 18 year old man who believes that there are people spying on him and monitoring him with video equipment. The young man is brought to hospital after having ransacked his house and ripped off the dry wall as he tried to look for the cameras he believed were being used to spy on him. When the doctor asks him how he can tell he is under surveillance he says they are using video equipment to track his actions, did he see any of this when he ripped apart the house? Jason counters that they are of cause too clever to be detected, however he insists he can actually hear them discussing whatever he is doing. When he is brushing his teeth they scratching his chin eating or using the toilet they talk to each other and say he is doing this or that. Evidently, Reznek (2010) concludes that Jason is having audio hallucinations which result to his acute paranoia; nevertheless he argues that Jason’s actions are not very different from what a normal person would do if they were being actually spied on. A normal person experiencing the auditory hallucination would probably ignore them when they looked around and noticed no one was actually watching or taking to them (Bentall and Slade, 1985). The people who were studied in the aforementioned studies were not very different form Jason in the sense that they all perceived entities and sounds that were not physically present or even possible . Therefore, this justifies the definition of madness by Voltaire, that madness is not actually a result of people having erroneous experiences and acting on them. In an attempt to illuminate the distinction between the anomalous perpetual experiences and the psychotic delusional ones, various studies have been carried out in correlation in which both have been found to be associated with paranormal beliefs (Bilder et al., 1985; Peralta, de Leon and Cuesta, 1999). Chapman and Chapman (1988) interviewed several students who had reported schizotypy on their perceptual experiences and from the study he claimed that bizarre and strange belief could exit independently of anomalous experience (Verdoux et al., 1998). To address the issue the Cardiff Anomalous Perceptions Scale (CAPS) was created and so far, it has proven to be a legitimate and accurate measure for numerous anomalous experiences, which have been made it easier for the comparison between normal anomalous and delusional perceptions and behavior to be made on an empirical basis (Bell, Halligan & Ellis, 2008). Bell, Halligan & Ellis (2006) carried out a study to test the theory that presupposes that patients with delusions manifest anomalous perceptual experience in pathological levels, for this study, there were 3 groups of patients. One consisted of psychotic people with concurrent hallucination, another with current hallucination and finally psychotics who were not distinguished by their hallucination, they predicted the two groups with hallucinations would score more highly than the hallucinating one. The key finding of the study was that the non-hallucinating but delusional patients showed little difference from the non-clinical ones in the anomalous perception indices which is goes against contemporary theories that hold that delusion can only exist in the presence of pathological levels of anomalous perception (Olson et al, 1985). Retrospectively, many researchers have argued that anomalous experiences are necessary or sufficient for delusion to occur (Ellis and Young, 1990; Ellis et al., 1997; Langdon and Coltheart, 2000; Maher, 1988, 1999). However, others have proposed that that the two components are not necessarily a requirement for delusion and although in both cases analogous delusions are cited as important part of the model. One should take to account the fact that since this study was focused on the anomalous perception as opposed to other possible sources of experience or distortion the results ultimately contradict Maher’s argument. In his theory he proposed that “a delusion is a hypothesis designed to explain unusual perceptual phenomena and developed through the operation of normal cognitive processes” (Maher, 1974). Conversely, it has however been argued that the anomalous experience is produced as a result a series of deficit emotions reactions to familiar faces in the Capgras cases study. Despite the fact that the CAPS experiment may have captured the anomalous experience, it may not necessarily capture the propose anomaly, this is the sort of distinction that that results in questions on capacity for the affective distinction to provide a discrete evidence for reciprocal object cognition (Bruce et al., 2003). Aside from what can be empirically proven through the CAPS and such like model, there are possible numerous other factors that affect the conscious perceptual experience, therefore, this study can be used to validate the fact that the anomalous experience is based on perceptual distortions as opposed to all anomalous experiences in general. In conclusion, there is compelling evidence from various studies that while pathological levels of anomalous perception experience are not necessarily exclusively responsible for delusions they have a significant contribution on them. Ultimately, from the factors examine herein, it is evident that despite the connection between anomalous experience and delusion, it is not there is a fine line between psychotic delusional and normal anomalous. Although a lot of research needs to be done before the difference can be ascertained grounded of empirical reasoning, the bottom line is that anomalous experiences in psychotic delusional people tend to form the basis and motivation for their actions alienating them from reality while in normal people rarely act on them. References Amador, X. F. & David, A. S. (1998) Insight and Psychosis. New York: Oxford University Press. Bayne, T. and Fernández J. (2011). Delusion and Self-Deception: Affective and Motivational Influences on Belief Formation Macquarie Monographs in Cognitive Science. Psychology Press. Bell V, Halligan, P. W. & Ellis, H. D. (2006) The Cardiff Anomalous Perceptions Scale (CAPS): A new validated measure of anomalous perceptual experience. 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