DELUSIONAL MISIDENTIFICATION SYNDROMES

The editors first describe the principal symptoms of the Capgras delus ion, the Fregoli delusion, the delusion of intermetamorphosis and the delusion of subjective doubles before developing the argument that it would be appropriate for international psychiatric diagnostic systems to include these disorders. Furthermore the similarity between them, t he reduplicative paramnesias and deja and jamais vu are pointed out. B y stressing a symptom-based approach it is possible to examine psychia tric, neurological and medical cases as arising from the same underlyi ng disturbance in cognition function. The relationship between delusio ns of misidentification and other delusions is also touched upon.