Paranoia

Paranoid protester in New York City

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Paranoia is a thought process characterized by excessive fear or anxiety, characteristically to the point where it would be considered irrational or delusional. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning an obsession with a perceived threat.

Origin of the word "paranoia"[edit]

The word 'paranoia' originates from the Greek "παράνοια" meaning madness: παρα ("para") = beside, beyond; νόος ("noos") = mind.

Clinical indicators[edit]

Historically, this word was used to describe any delusional state of mind. In recent times, the term is used clinically to describe delusions wherein the affected person believes they are being persecuted. Specifically, it is defined as involving two central elements:

• The affected thinks that harm is occurring, or is going to occur, to them.
• The affected thinks that the perceived persecutor has the intention to cause harm.

Paranoid Personality Disorder is defined in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5, primarily based upon a person having "a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent."^[2]:649

The World Health Organization's ICD-10^[3] defines paranoid personality disorder as:^[4]

Paranoia is often a symptom of a psychotic illness (mainly schizophrenia), although attenuated features may be present in other non-psychotic diagnoses, such as paranoid personality disorder. Paranoia can also be a side effect of medication or recreational drugs.

In politics[edit]

Nazi German propaganda: "Das jüdische Komplott ("The Jewish Conspiracy").

In 1963, Richard Hofstadter gave a lecture titled "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", which was subsequently expanded and published in Harper's Magazine in 1964,^[5] and reprinted in a collection of essays in 1965.^[6] Hofstadter defines the political paranoiac as someone with a sub-clinical form of paranoia who nonetheless shares the traits of being:^[6]:4

Hofstadter claimed that the paranoid style was only associated with minority movements within the United States, probably because as a historian of American history, he was naturally looking backwards.^[6]:7 He did not foresee the paranoia of the Richard Nixon (who won the 1972 Presidential Election with 61% of the popular vote) and Donald Trump (who lost the popular vote in 2016 but won the Electoral College vote) presidencies. On the other hand, Hofstadter stated that paranoia is a common ingredient in fascism, referring specifically to Nazism in Germany (through the international Jewish conspiracy),^[6]:7 and Nazism was popular among Germans. The subsequent Holocaust was the culmination of Hitler's paranoia, the worst act of genocide in history, only rivaled by the Holodomor.

Hofstadter argued that the paranoid style is primarily expressed through all-embracing conspiracy theories, such as the "Jesuits or Freemasons, international capitalists, international Jews, or Communists".^[6]:6

Significant paranoid American political movements that Hofstadter identified were McCarthyism and the John Birch Society.^[6]

Hofstadter also noted a curious behavior ("a fundamental paradox") of paranoid political groups: imitation of perceived or real characteristics of their enemies.^[6]:32-34 For example:

• The Ku Klux Klan in their anti-Catholicism imitating the Catholic priestly robes, elaborate rituals, and hierarchy^[6]:32-33
• The John Birch Society in their anti-communism imitating communist cells and front groups^[6]:33

Joseph Stalin[edit]

Stalin's purge trials are briefly mentioned by Hofstadter,^[6]:6 but the full extent of the "Great Purge" was not fully known until much later when the Soviet archives were opened to outside researchers starting in 1991. Best estimates for the number of people purged range from 950,000 to 1.2 million deaths; this did not include people sent to Gulags who survived.^[7] Regardless, it's arguably the one of largest known act of political paranoia in history, along with Stalin's intentional starvation of Ukrainians in the Holodomor.

Richard Nixon[edit]

Abraham Lincoln is watching him...

Nixon's paranoia is not mentioned by Hofstadter, probably because its full extent was not known until the Watergate scandal when Nixon's White House tape recordings began to be made public. There were indications of his paranoia before then, though, with his association with McCarthyism, and with his sore-loserism following his 1962 election loss Pat Brown in the California governor's race when he attacked the press as biased, "You don't have Nixon to kick around any more".^[8]

During Nixon's presidency, he kept an 'enemies list' of people whom he did not like or whom he thought were out to get him. The list started with 20 people, but was gradually expanded to include dozens of people and organizations. The list was maintained by White House chief counsel Charles Colson.^[9] Given what a rotter Nixon was,^[10] many of the people on the list actually were honored to be on it.^[11] The Nixon administration was also known as being extremely secretive,^[10] which would go hand-in-hand with paranoia.

Nixon held a lot of conspiracy theories about people whom he thought were out to get him.^[12] The one that pops up most frequently in the transcripts is his belief that Jews were out to get him,^{[12][13][14][15]} this despite having Jews in the White House staff, most prominently Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Nixon's paranoia primarily focused on Jews, intellectuals, and the Ivy League graduates, with the common paranoid element that they are "arrogant and put themselves above the law".^[16] Nixon imitated his views of them by his own arrogance ("…but when the President does it, that means it is not illegal…"^[17]) and by his ordering crimes be committed in the Watergate scandal.^[16]

Sample paranoid ideation by Nixon:

Sample anti-semitism by Nixon:

Donald Trump[edit]

Trump promoted a wide range of conspiracy theories (e.g., Obama citizenship denial, Vince Foster, Jeffrey Epstein, hydroxychloroquine).^[19] A unified conspiracy theory (QAnon) was also developed to promote Trump.

The crescendo of Trump's paranoia was the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot that was fueled by QAnon, and by his self-created "Stop the Steal" conspiracy theory that claimed that he actually won the 2020 U.S. presidential election.^[20][21] Trump's paranoiac manifestations of sore-loserism were far worse than those of Nixon in that by fomenting insurrection, Trump threatened the very existence of democracy in the United States.

Pronoia[edit]

Don't look behind you.

"Pronoia" was coined by Fred H. Goldner of Queens College describing a phenomenon opposite to paranoia.^[22] Long before the term was coined, J.D. Salinger referred to the concept in his 1955 novella Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.^[23] In it, the character Seymour Glass writes in his diary, “Oh, God, if I'm anything by a clinical name, I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy." Science fiction author Philip K. Dick referred to pronoia as an antidote to paranoia in his private work, Exegesis, in which it is mentioned in relation to his perceived protection by an entity he called V.A.L.I.S. (Vast Active Living Intelligence System); an ancient alien satellite that he believed was the biblical god.^[24]:568,931

Narapoia[edit]

"Narapoia" is a short story by Alan Nelson that originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1951. In it, the protagonist says to his psychiatrist, "… while I’m walking along the street, suddenly I have this feeling there is somebody just ahead of me. Somebody I’m after. Someone I’m following." He also has non-hallucinations in which a bizarre bird creature he dreams about is real and sitting on top of his radio when he wakes up. Finally, all this sends his psychiatrist round the bend, which suggests that the protagonist was really a Scientologist in deep cover.^[25]

Informal definitions[edit]

"Paranoia is the delusion that your enemies are organized." — William S. Burroughs

"Paranoia is awareness." — Charles Manson

See also[edit]

For those of you in the mood, RationalWiki has a fun article about Paranoia.

References[edit]