Long Shadows: Trauma and Delusions

12/06/18 • 13 min

Clinical psychologist Professor Daniel Freeman continues his exploration of delusions, looking at historic and contemporary case studies.

In this programme, he looks at delusions relating to trauma.

He begins with a case study from 1800 recorded by the pioneering mental health physician Philippe Pinel in Paris, of a man who believed he had lost his head on the scaffold. It is one of many accounts of how guillotine trauma created delusional responses in people during the French Revolution.

It is vivid cases such as these most likely to be recorded in psychiatric studies. But today there is a growing awareness of the "clinician's illusion" and how mental health services see only the rare, extreme end of a continuum. Delusional thinking is actually more common then once thought, and for most people it is not problematic or in need of care.

In fact, is there an untold story in the history of delusions - that they can be helpful?

Daniel talks to John about the delusion he believes sustained him in the aftermath of a traumatic childhood.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd and Eve Streeter A Greenpoint production for BBC Radio 4

Clinical psychologist Professor Daniel Freeman continues his exploration of delusions, looking at historic and contemporary case studies.

In this programme, he looks at delusions relating to trauma.

In fact, is there an untold story in the history of delusions - that they can be helpful?

Daniel talks to John about the delusion he believes sustained him in the aftermath of a traumatic childhood.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd and Eve Streeter A Greenpoint production for BBC Radio 4

Previous Episode

Francis Spira and the 'Delusion of Despair'

Clinical psychologist Professor Daniel Freeman continues his exploration of delusions, looking at both historic and contemporary case studies.

In this programme he examines the Delusion of Despair.

He begins with the story of Francis Spira, the 15th-century Italian lawyer who believed he was damned by God – a case of delusional thinking that haunted the 16th and 17th centuries, and inspired Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

In the last 20 years, our appreciation and understanding of delusions - a strongly held, fixed, false belief - has begun to shift enormously. Delusional ideas are remarkably common in the population. And delusions are closely tied to a person’s sense of self, their views of the world and what is happening in the environment.

Daniel talks to Cheryl to find out how an excessively negative sense of self can set in motion a troubling line of thought that other people may be judging you, observing you, and waiting to punish you.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd and Eve Streeter A Greenpoint production for BBC Radio 4

Next Episode

A Paranoid Conspiracy: James Tilly Matthews and the Air Loom Gang

Clinical psychologist Daniel Freeman explores cases of delusion from the archives and speaks to people who have experienced them first-hand.

In this programme, Daniel examines the most common type of delusion – paranoia. The incorrect belief that others are observing you and may be trying to harm you.

Occasionally in the archives, cases emerge that allow us to see what such a delusion might have meant on an existential level for a person suffering from it. One of them is the case of James Tilly Matthews. A London tea broker who was committed to Bethlem psychiatric hospital in 1797, Tilly Matthews became convinced of an elaborate conspiracy involving the British establishment and a mind-controlling machine called the Air Loom. He is considered to be the first fully documented case of paranoid schizophrenia.

Developing the understanding and treatment of paranoia has been the focus of Daniel's work as a clinical psychologist at the University of Oxford. Deciding whether to trust or mistrust is a vital aspect of human cognition, but accurate judgment of others’ intentions is often challenging. At a cultural level, a fear of others is variably connected to the political and social climate.

At the heart of the severest paranoia - persecutory delusions - is the unfounded belief in an ongoing threat from others. In people seen in clinical services with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, the fears can also be provoked by hearing negative voices (auditory hallucinations).

Daniel meets Toby, who volunteered to share his own experience of a paranoid delusion, and the isolation that takes hold as a consequence.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd and Eve Streeter A Greenpoint production for BBC Radio 4