This thesis examines attentional and cognitive biases for particular facial expressions in delusion-prone and deluded individuals. The exploration of cognitive biases in delusion-prone individuals provides one means of elucidating psychological processes that might be involved in the genesis of delusions. Chapter 1 provides a brief review of the continuum approach to schizophrenia, and outlines recent theoretical conceptualisations of delusions. The study of schizophrenia phenomena at the symptom level has become a popular method of inquiry, given the heterogeneous phenotypic expression of schizophrenia, and the uncertainty surrounding the existence of a core neuropathology. Delusions are one of the most commonly experienced symptoms of schizophrenia, and have traditionally been regarded as fixed, false beliefs that are pathognomonic of an organic disease process. However, recent phenomenological evidence of delusional ideation in the general population has led to the conceptualisation of delusions as multi-dimensional entities, lying at the extreme end of a continuum from normal through to maladaptive beliefs. Recent investigations of the information processing abnormalities in deluded individuals are reviewed in Chapter 2. This strand of research has revealed evidence of various biases in social cognition, particularly in relation to threat-related material, in deluded individuals. These biases are evident in probabilistic reasoning, attribution style, and attention, but there has been relatively little investigation of cognitive aberrations in delusion-prone individuals. In the present thesis, social-cognitive biases were examined in relation to a standard series of faces that included threat-related (anger, fear) and non-threatening (happy, sad) expressions, in both delusion-prone and clinically deluded individuals. Chapters 3 and 4 present the results of behavioural (RT, affect recognition accuracy) and visual scanpath investigations in healthy participants assessed for level of delusion- proneness. The results indicate that delusion-prone individuals are slower at processing angry faces, and show a general (rather than emotion-specific) impairment in facial affect recognition, compared to non-prone healthy controls. Visual scanpath studies show that healthy individuals tend to direct more foveal fixations to the feature areas (eyes, nose, mouth) of threat-related facial expressions (anger, fear). By contrast, delusion-prone individuals exhibit reduced foveal attention to threat-related faces, combined with �extended� scanpaths, that may be interpreted as an attentional pattern of �vigilance-avoidance� for social threat. Chapters 5 and 6 extend the work presented in Chapters 3 and 4, by investigating the presence of similar behavioural and attentional biases in deluded schizophrenia, compared to healthy control and non-deluded schizophrenia groups. Deluded schizophrenia subjects exhibited a similar delay in processing angry faces, compared to non-prone control participants, while both deluded and non-deluded schizophrenia groups displayed a generalised affect recognition deficit. Visual scanpath investigations revealed a similar style of avoiding a broader range of negative (anger, fear, sad) faces in deluded schizophrenia, as well as a common pattern of fewer fixations with shorter duration, and reduced attention to facial features of all faces in both deluded and non-deluded schizophrenia. The examination of inferential biases for emotions displayed in facial expressions is presented in Chapter 7 in a study of causal attributional style. The results of this study provide some support for a �self-serving� bias in deluded schizophrenia, as well as evidence for an inability to appreciate situational cues when making causal judgements in both delusion-prone and deluded schizophrenia. A theoretical integration of the current findings is presented in Chapter 8, with regard to the implications for cognitive theories of delusions, and neurobiological models of schizophrenia phenomena, more generally. Visual attention biases for threat-related facial expressions in delusion-prone and deluded schizophrenia are consistent with proposals of neural dysconnectivity between frontal-limbic networks, while attributional biases and impaired facial expression perception may reflect dysfunction in a broader �social brain� network encompassing these and medial temporal lobe regions. Strong evidence for attentional biases and affect recognition deficits in delusion-prone individuals implicates their role in the development of delusional beliefs, but the weaker evidence for attributional biases in delusion-prone individuals suggests that inferential biases about others� emotions may be relevant only to the maintenance of delusional beliefs (or that attributional biases for others� emotional states may reflect other, trait-linked difficulties related to mentalising ability). In summary, the work presented in this thesis demonstrates the utility of adopting a single-symptom approach to schizophrenia within the continuum framework, and attests to the importance of further investigations of aberrant social cognition in relation to the development of delusions.

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / A psicose ordinária se insere em um programa de investigação do Campo freudiano que relê a transmissão de Lacan a partir das ferramentas teóricas de seu último ensino. Ela se apoia na constatação de casuísticas onde não acontece o desencadeamento clássico e ruidoso, tal como o da psicose extraordinária. Ao contrário, a sintomatologia é discreta e exige do psicanalista uma atenção redobrada em relação à referência estrutural de uma psicose clássica. Partimos da investigação desta clínica estruturalista das psicoses, do primeiro ensino de Lacan, e avaliamos se o significante Nome-do-Pai persiste como operador único no diagnóstico diferencial. Ou se, desde as modificações introduzidas por Lacan a partir da pluralização do Nome-do-Pai, da inserção dos conceitos de lalíngua e falasser, e da valorização do gozo na clínica mais fluída, borromeana, o operador em questão pode ser substituído pelo sinthoma. A categoria de psicose ordinária reconsidera de uma forma diferenciada a foraclusão deste significante a partir do objeto de gozo, e esclarece a pluralidade de significantes-mestres, que falam do sujeito fora do discurso estabelecido pelo Nome-do-Pai. Em seguida, estudamos dois aforismos lacanianos. O primeiro, todo mundo é louco, isto é, delirante, convoca uma clínica ordenada pela foraclusão generalizada, na qual se inscreve algo da ordem de um não orientado. O segundo, o aforismo a relação sexual não existe, causa impasse em todos os sujeitos. Ambos requerem a resposta do falasser face ao indizível e a construção de uma saída singular, que não passa de um delírio apreendido em uma positividade. Afinal, se a psicanálise de orientação lacaniana institui que todos os discursos são defesas contra o real, e todas as construções da realidade são delirantes, é necessário que cada um invente um modo de saber-fazer com o real. / Ordinary Psychosis is part of a research program in the Freudian Field to reconsider Lacanian ideas, specially the theoretical concepts of his last teaching. It is supported by clinical case observations, when there is not a classical and evident triggering, as it happens with extraordinary psychotic cases. On the contrary, symptomatology is discreet and demands from the analyst double attention regarding to a structural reference of classical psychosis. We start from the investigation of psychotic structural clinic, from Lacanian first teaching, to evaluate if the Name-of-the-Father persists as a unique reference for the differential diagnosis or if it can be replaced by the sinthome, according to the modifications Lacan introduces when he proposes plural names of the father, as well as the concepts of lalangue and speaking being more coherent to a fluid and Borromean clinical evaluation. Such category of ordinary psychosis reconsiders, in a different way, the significant foreclosure in terms of the jouissance object and also clarifies the pluralization of master significants which stand for the subject outside the discourse established by the Name-of-the-Father. Next, we studied two Lacanian aphorisms. The former, Everyone is mad, that is, delirious invites to a clinical approach coordinated by a generalization of foreclosure in which something disoriented is inscribed. The latter, the aphorism the sexual relation does not exist causes impasse for all subjects. Both require from the speaking being an answer facing what is impossible of being said and the construction of a singular way out which cannot be positively apprehended as anything else but a delusion. Nevertheless, if Lacanian oriented psychoanalysis institutes that all discourses are defences to the real and all constructions of reality are delirious, it is necessary for everyone to invent their know how to do with the real.

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro / A psicose ordinária se insere em um programa de investigação do Campo freudiano que relê a transmissão de Lacan a partir das ferramentas teóricas de seu último ensino. Ela se apoia na constatação de casuísticas onde não acontece o desencadeamento clássico e ruidoso, tal como o da psicose extraordinária. Ao contrário, a sintomatologia é discreta e exige do psicanalista uma atenção redobrada em relação à referência estrutural de uma psicose clássica. Partimos da investigação desta clínica estruturalista das psicoses, do primeiro ensino de Lacan, e avaliamos se o significante Nome-do-Pai persiste como operador único no diagnóstico diferencial. Ou se, desde as modificações introduzidas por Lacan a partir da pluralização do Nome-do-Pai, da inserção dos conceitos de lalíngua e falasser, e da valorização do gozo na clínica mais fluída, borromeana, o operador em questão pode ser substituído pelo sinthoma. A categoria de psicose ordinária reconsidera de uma forma diferenciada a foraclusão deste significante a partir do objeto de gozo, e esclarece a pluralidade de significantes-mestres, que falam do sujeito fora do discurso estabelecido pelo Nome-do-Pai. Em seguida, estudamos dois aforismos lacanianos. O primeiro, todo mundo é louco, isto é, delirante, convoca uma clínica ordenada pela foraclusão generalizada, na qual se inscreve algo da ordem de um não orientado. O segundo, o aforismo a relação sexual não existe, causa impasse em todos os sujeitos. Ambos requerem a resposta do falasser face ao indizível e a construção de uma saída singular, que não passa de um delírio apreendido em uma positividade. Afinal, se a psicanálise de orientação lacaniana institui que todos os discursos são defesas contra o real, e todas as construções da realidade são delirantes, é necessário que cada um invente um modo de saber-fazer com o real. / Ordinary Psychosis is part of a research program in the Freudian Field to reconsider Lacanian ideas, specially the theoretical concepts of his last teaching. It is supported by clinical case observations, when there is not a classical and evident triggering, as it happens with extraordinary psychotic cases. On the contrary, symptomatology is discreet and demands from the analyst double attention regarding to a structural reference of classical psychosis. We start from the investigation of psychotic structural clinic, from Lacanian first teaching, to evaluate if the Name-of-the-Father persists as a unique reference for the differential diagnosis or if it can be replaced by the sinthome, according to the modifications Lacan introduces when he proposes plural names of the father, as well as the concepts of lalangue and speaking being more coherent to a fluid and Borromean clinical evaluation. Such category of ordinary psychosis reconsiders, in a different way, the significant foreclosure in terms of the jouissance object and also clarifies the pluralization of master significants which stand for the subject outside the discourse established by the Name-of-the-Father. Next, we studied two Lacanian aphorisms. The former, Everyone is mad, that is, delirious invites to a clinical approach coordinated by a generalization of foreclosure in which something disoriented is inscribed. The latter, the aphorism the sexual relation does not exist causes impasse for all subjects. Both require from the speaking being an answer facing what is impossible of being said and the construction of a singular way out which cannot be positively apprehended as anything else but a delusion. Nevertheless, if Lacanian oriented psychoanalysis institutes that all discourses are defences to the real and all constructions of reality are delirious, it is necessary for everyone to invent their know how to do with the real.

En nous référant aux théorisations de l’épistémologie psychanalytique, nous concevons la schizophrénie comme résultant d’une expérience traumatique primaire n’ayant pu être intégrée au sein de la subjectivité. Ce traumatisme, nous le rattachons moins à un évènement en tant que tel qu’à la position impensable qu’il désigne pour le sujet. Ainsi, en nous inspirant de la pensée de P. Aulagnier et de R. Roussillon, nous suggérons que le noyau traumatique conditionnant le développement d’une problématique schizophrénique se rapporte à la position d’objet pulsionnel, ou de non-désir, à laquelle se trouve identifié le sujet au sein des premiers échanges avec son environnement. <p><p>Face à l’impensable de cette position identificatoire, le sujet se voit contraint de s’extraire de la scène relationnelle avec ses objets primaires, se clivant par la même opération du capital représentatif qui lui est associé. Dans ces conditions, nous pensons que le délire, moins d’apparaître comme une production pathologique dépourvue de sens, correspond à un mode de réponse face au retour hallucinatoire de l’impensé traumatique. Aussi, à partir d’une méthodologie qualitative basée sur l’analyse d’une douzaine de cas cliniques, nous mettons en évidence trois principales fonctions du délire dans la schizophrénie. La première, conceptualisée sous le terme de « fonction contenante », procède à la mise en forme et à la transformation signifiante de ce qui ne put être symbolisé de l’expérience traumatique. La seconde, nommée « fonction localisante », tente de situer en dehors du sujet le débordement pulsionnel inhérent au traumatisme primaire. La troisième, appelée « fonction identifiante », permet à la personne délirante de s’attribuer un énoncé identificatoire qui, de manière auto-créée, supplée à l’énigme de son histoire insensée.<p><p>Enfin, l’analyse de nos données cliniques souligne que ces trois fonctions de l’activité délirante ne se réalisent pas de façon aléatoire mais qu’elles s’articulent selon une logique particulière. Ainsi, nous suggérons qu’à partir de sa triple opération le délire schizophrénique tend à se déployer en un « processus délirant », par lequel le sujet peut rendre pensable et supportable la position traumatique à laquelle il a été identifié au cours de son histoire.<p><p><p>By following theories from the psychoanalytical epistemology, we consider schizophrenia as the result of a primary trauma that has not been assimilated within the subjectivity. We connect less this traumatism with an event than with the unthinkable position the subject is identified to. Therefore, being inspired by the thought of P. Aulagnier and R. Roussillon, we suggest that the traumatic nucleus which conditions the development of schizophrenia is related to the position of instinctual object, or of non-desire, to which the subject is identified within the first exchanges with his environment. <p><p>In view of this unthinkable position, the subject is forced to remove himself from the relationship with his primary objects, splitting off from the representative capital that is associated with it. In these conditions, we think that the delusion appears less as a meaningless pathological production than as a way of answering to the hallucinatory return of the traumatic unthought. From a qualitative methodology based on the analysis of a dozen clinical cases, we highlight three main functions of the delusion in schizophrenia. The first, conceptualized under the term «containing function», carries out the shaping and the significant transformation of what could have not been symbolized of the traumatic experience. The second, called «localizing function», tries to locate outside of the subject the instinctual overflow inherent to the primary trauma. The third, named «identifying function», enables the delusional person to assume an identificatory principle which, in a self-created way, compensates for the enigma of his senseless history.<p><p>Finally, the analysis of our clinical data underlines that these three functions of the delusional activity are not randomly accomplished but are organized according to a particular logic. Thus from its triple operation, we suggest that the schizophrenic delusion tends to develop into a «delusional process», by which the subject can make thinkable and bearable the traumatic position to which he was identified during his history.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences Psychologiques et de l'éducation / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

A qualitative, descriptive, explorative, and contextual research design was selected for this study. The purpose was to explore the phenomenon of mass hysteria among the Basotho in Lesotho and to develop guidelines which may facilitate early intervention and better management and control of mass hysteria outbreaks. The study area covered four of the ten districts in Lesotho. Four high schools where recent outbreaks of mass hysteria have been reported were included in the study. Semi-structured individual interviews and focus group interviews were conducted to collect the data. Purposive sampling was used to select young women in high schools who experienced mass hysteria; teachers who were present during mass hysteria episodes; a parent; and traditional healers and religious leaders who were involved in treating the affected.Thirteen individual interviews were held respectively with one victim of mass hysteria from a rural area, four school principals,a parent,five traditional healers, a priest and apastor. Three focus group interviews were conducted with thirty affected young women from three different high schools and two focus group interviews were held with twenty teachers from two different high schools.The data were transcribed verbatim and content analysis was done using open and axial coding. Four themes emerged from the findings, namely: manifestations of mass hysteria among the Basotho; interventions used by the Basotho to alleviate mass hysteria; Basotho’s views about the phenomenon of mass hysteria; and effects of mass hysteria onthe Basotho. The findings show that young women in Lesotho experience both physical and psychological symptoms during mass hysteria episodes and that it has a contagious effect. The interventions used by the Basotho to alleviate mass hysteria include traditional healing, herbal remedies, exorcism and prayer.The Basotho have different views about mass hysteria attributing it to either supernatural forces or natural illness. Episodes of mass hysteria have a negative impact on the victims,their families, and those who witnessed the episodes, causing confusion, fear and anxiety. Guidelines were compiled to assist teachersand health workers to improve the management and control of mass hysteria episodes in Lesotho. / Health Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (Health Studies)

An interwoven fiction piece representing four perspectives and its effects on self-awareness. The most effective way to blur the line of self in this structure is to braid the minds, voices, and stories, of each perspective. With a focal point where all the voices eventually drift to being the frame of the story, there will be a unique distance between the stories. This thesis explores the effects of different types of mental and physiological illnesses through fiction, highlighting the effect of perception on fact and the perspective of the mentally ill.

Excerpt: On May 14, 2015 a 34-minute audio message was released by the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s media arm al-Furqan.

<abstract>'In Two Minds' is a novel of false beliefs. Set in contemporary Sydney, it deals with the relationship between two sisters in their late thirties, Kara and Linda Hille. Told in the second person singular from the point of view of the elder sister, Linda, it is based around the neurological delusion of the younger sibling, Kara. Kara wrongly believes that their mother, Stella, has been replaced by an impostor, 'Mrs. Whitegloves'. For the greater part, the narrative 'you' relates events in the sisters' lives and deals with issues such as the consequences of condoned child abuse, the dilemma of human cloning and the future of 'the brand' in the light of contemporary global marketing. Linda, an advertising executive, struggles with a formidable work-project, an account that is lost to a competitor, and the mistaken belief that she is responsible for her sister's plight. Shocking graffiti about herself, which appears at the same time as she wins an advertising award, proves to be the catalyst that brings beneficial change to her life. Through the tragedy of confronting her sister's devastation and her own challenges, Linda leaves her job, believing this will allow her to start again - differently. In the final chapter, the difference is registered in a shift from the second person to the consolidated first person method of narration. ABSTRACT EXEGESIS The dissertation 'A Singular Voice' documents aspects of authorial, psychoanalytical and literary significance in the creation of a fiction which draws on personal material confrontational to the writer. It also discusses some wider (non-fictional and other) uses of the narrative 'you' in order to establish the literary tradition in which the novel 'In Two Minds' may be situated. This disseration examines the use of the second-person singular pronoun 'you' as narrator, mainly in contemporary fiction. It concentrates on the ways in which the narrative 'you' was employed to achieve a 'cover', mask or persona for the 'I' behind the text in the novel 'In Two Minds', and explains why it was necessary to seek such subterfuge. It describes how certain grammatical and rhetorical resources were used to build and maintain 'cover', while at the same time allowing the narrative 'you' to express a particular aspect of the fictional protagonist, address the reader, and sustain the story of which it is the intradiegetic narratee. Related narrative elements include construction of the characters through the use of the narrative 'you', for example the narcissistic mother, Stella; the phantom double, 'Mrs. Whitegloves'; the sufferer of Capgras' delusion, Kara; and the ultimate bearer of the singular 'you' voice, the protagonist Linda.

JESUINO, Filipe de Menezes. O delírio paranóico nos sistemas de Freud e Jung: contribuições mútuas e contrastes. 2008. 177 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Psicologia) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Departamento de Psicologia, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Fortaleza-CE, 2008. / Submitted by moises gomes (celtinha_malvado@hotmail.com) on 2012-01-09T13:23:06Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2008_dis_FDMJesuino.PDF: 1435919 bytes, checksum: c6da8727bd49d90b97e333a11de701ec (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Josineide Góis(josineide@ufc.br) on 2012-01-12T13:39:09Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2008_dis_FDMJesuino.PDF: 1435919 bytes, checksum: c6da8727bd49d90b97e333a11de701ec (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-01-12T13:39:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2008_dis_FDMJesuino.PDF: 1435919 bytes, checksum: c6da8727bd49d90b97e333a11de701ec (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-07-10 / This thesis was made on the purpose of demonstrate the fundamental contributions and contrasts between Freud’s and Jung’s theories on the problem of the paranoiac delusions. To persecute this goal we have chosen to discuss the developments of both theories individually and, in doing so, demonstrate the primary conceits that were associated with them and then, finally, distinguish the main contributions between the two psychological systems. Afterwards we have shown how those influences were made possible and by which means they came to be. The main contributions verified were the inspiration of Freud’s theory of libido to Jung’s own, the importance of Jung’s complexes theory to Freud and their mutual interest in the archaic inheritances verified in the delusions of the paranoiac patients. We have found that the differences in the context, and the inevitable presuppositions did not cripple a dialogue and some significant contributions between them. Notwithstanding, these contributions were made possible only by a recreation of the ideas according to the internal context of the system which, of course, is modified in the process. / Esta dissertação tem por objetivo demonstrar as contribuições mútuas e contrastes fundamentais entre as teorias de Freud e Jung quanto ao delírio paranóico. Para alcançar esse objetivo, decidimos abordar individualmente as teorias e, por essa via, demonstrar os principais conceitos associados a elas para, apenas então, distinguir as principais contribuições entre os dois sistemas psicológicos a respeito do delírio. Em seguida, elucidamos como essas influências foram possíveis e de que maneira elas se originaram. As principais contribuições verificadas foram: a influência da noção freudiana de libido para a teoria de Jung, a importância da teoria junguiana dos complexos para a Psicanálise freudiana e seu interesse mútuo sobre as heranças arcaicas verificadas nos delírios. Constatamos que as diferenças no contexto e os inevitáveis pressupostos não impediram o diálogo e algumas contribuições importantes entre os dois pontos de vista. Os aportes, entretanto, somente foram possíveis com a recriação das noções de acordo com o contexto interno de cada sistema que, decerto, também se modifica no processo em sentido amplo.

The diploma thesis deals with psychosis. Portraits of people who suffered from some type of psychosis, and which in most cases is caused by long-term drug abuse or drinking of alcohol. This is depicted with figurative painting in such a way that the painting that its style and the color spectrum corrensponds to the profile of a person with this form of mental illness and mental changes in the brain at different stages of of the disease. The output will be a series of paintings of a united size of formats that will be based , thematically a basis of dialogues with people who currently suffer or have suffered from some psychosis. The authenticity of the experiences of these people with toxic psychosis is very sensitive material, therefor it is proccessed, in this series, in such a way that can it bring closer to the viewers to posibally unimaginable situations and ways of perception of reality.