Paranoia

Paranoia, type of psychosis in which a person suffers from logically consistent delusions (fixed, false beliefs) of persecution or grandeur. In the late 1890s, Sigmund Freud postulated that paranoia is an intellectual disorder in which the primary symptom is extreme distrust of others; the paranoid person may believe that people are out to kill him or her. In addition, in paranoid schizophrenia the patient may have hallucinations in which famous persons from history or mythology appear and communicate messages; this manifestation is related to the patient's delusion of grandeur. The American Psychiatric Association applies the term delusional disorder to paranoia to distinguish between paranoid symptoms of other mental disorders (schizophrenia, depression, organic mental disorder) and paranoid disorders whose primary manifestation is paranoid delusions without other symptoms such as hallucinations.