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Delusions and the Madness of the Masses
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2010
Summary
We all think that we can tell the difference between someone who is mad, or whom psychiatrists call psychotic, and someone who is sane. But can we really tell who is mad and who is not? Do we really know what madness is and how it should be recognized? Have psychiatrists made a sensible distinction between the patient who believes that aliens are beaming messages to him from a foreign planet, and the religious fanatic who believes God communicates to him via automatic writing? Is there a difference between the paranoid patient who believes that the FBI is after him, and the sizeable proportion of our normal population that believe that the US government orchestrated the 9-11 bombings? Here, Reznek hopes to shed light on the delusions of the masses-those delusions that are common to everyday people living so-called ordinary lives. He provides an understanding of madness and the psychological processes that drive us to adopt delusions, arguing that it is a mistake to view only schizophrenic patients as delusional, while excluding large groups of society from such an analysis. If we abandon the idea that whole communities cannot share a delusion, we can come to a better understanding about why the world is such a dangerous place.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2010
ISBN-Print
978-1-4422-0605-2
ISBN-Online
978-1-4422-0607-6
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
226
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction: Delusions about Delusions No access
Chapter 1. The Translation Paradox No access Pages 1 - 28
Chapter 2. The Incorrigibility Paradox No access Pages 29 - 46
Chapter 3. Is Everyone Mad? No access Pages 47 - 68
Chapter 4. The Community Paradox No access Pages 69 - 90
Chapter 5. Communal Madness:Religious and Secular No access Pages 91 - 126
Chapter 6. The Rationality Paradox No access Pages 127 - 144
Chapter 7. The Evolution of Error No access Pages 145 - 162
Chapter 8. Delusions Are Dangerous No access Pages 163 - 184
Conclusion: The Sleep of Reason No access Pages 185 - 196
