ABSTRACT
Where are we now? In the last chapter we examined a general instance of one of the exemplars of a mental disorder. This is a disorder of reactivity or impulse (to use the language of Chapter 2) known as addiction. To be sure, some cases of addictive behavior patterns may be expressions of a brain disorder, but the focus of the chapter was on cases in which addictive patterns express a mental disorder or illness and wherein psychological forces are an important part of the condition’s causal explanatory foundations. The present chapter examines a disorder of incoherence (again, to use the language of
Chapter 2) known as delusion or delusional disorders, and it gives special attention to paranoia and grandiose delusions. The chapter also looks at schizophrenia, autism, depression and the subject of therapy for a mental disorder. The topic or focus that holds the chapter together as a single chapter is our basic or funda-
mental capacity for comprehension of self and world and various impairments within that basic capacity. There are several disorders that mean that a person is ‘out of touch with reality’ and in which the possession and expression of patently false or bizarre attitudes or dramatic and harmful failures to comprehend engenders suspicion of mental illness.
