ABSTRACT
When emphasis is placed on intersubjective agreement in identifying the way clinical delusions contravene our epistemic values, as it was in the previous chapter, something of a puzzle begins to emerge. On the one hand, it is precisely the solipsistic, and idiosyncratically “private” nature of some states that makes us think of them as delusional. Yet in folie à deux, one person is described as inducing or effecting delusional states in another. And, acknowledging the so-called “madness of crowds,” the effects of social contagion on belief states, affect and behavior have long been observed. Some unshared beliefs seem to be delusional because they are solipsistic then, but so also are shared beliefs when they result from social contagion.
