Exploration of “Delusional Attachments” as Grandiose Delusions

As someone who has experienced delusional episodes and studied psychology, I was a bit perplexed by the emergence of so-called “delusional attachments” (DAs) on social media. For the uninitiated (who I quite envy), delusional attachment is a nonmedical term that refers to a person’s false belief that he is a different person, such as a character from a piece of fiction or a real life celebrity, rooted in psychosis. Unfortunately, I am not able to source any credible website, study, paper or individual for this definition. DAs seems to have their origins on the Internet and can be frequently found within online platforms that cater to fandoms and teenagers (ex: Amino, Tumblr, etc.). When attempting to provide a medical explanation for the condition, people have pointed to grandiose delusions (GDs), AKA delusions of grandeur. GDs are a topic in which I am fairly versed, seeing as they played a large role in my diagnosis as bipolar and I often display them during mania. My interest was further piqued and I continued to explore.

First and foremost, a delusion of grandeur is a person’s false belief that he is someone other than who he is, such as a religious figure (ex: the messiah) or a celebrity (ex: the president), or that he has special abilities (ex: musical genius), powers (ex: flight) or possessions (ex: a rare artifact). Such convictions have no basis in reality and are most often found in patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dementia or delirium (Brusie, 2017). The greatest risk factor for dementia is old age, and the others include health conditions associated with aging (ex: diabetes, heart disease, etc.). Early onset cases of dementia have been found to occur in people in their 30s, 40s and 50s (Higuera, 2018). It does not simply develop in adolescence. Delirium can be caused by drug use, withdrawal, low oxygen levels in the bloodstream and severe chemical changes in the brain in general. It usually occurs for a short amount of time and subsides quickly (Badii, 2019). Consequently, it follows that the longer-lasting GDs these many young people claim to experience in the form of delusional attachments could most realistically be accredited to schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Seeing as the clinical reality suggests that there is much symptomatic overlap between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Laursen, Agerbo & Pedersen, 2009), for the purpose of discussing delusions of grandeur, it would not be meaningful to dabble in variation related to diagnosis. It would seem that there is little use in trying to separate a bipolar person’s experience with grandiose beliefs and the functionality of such delusions from those of a schizophrenic. I make that assertion because I will be speaking from my own experience as well later in this overview.

Specialists often describe delusions in one of two terms, secondary or primary. Secondary delusions develop as a result of an incorrect inference or misunderstanding and are more based in reality (Jaspers, 1997). A few examples are convictions that one is being followed by a stalker, conspired against by coworkers or loved from afar by a stranger. On the other hand, primary delusions suddenly arise from an unexpected “insight” that reveals itself to a patient (Sips, 2019) and can be quite bizarre in nature. The belief that one is a figure such as a celebrity or a character from a franchise would fall into the latter category. Patients with primary delusions are not inclined to seek social validation for their beliefs and tend to be indifferent when people refute them (Parnas, 2004). These aspects are striking because they directly conflict with much of the DA community’s behavior. Many of its members frantically accuse people of “reality-checks” that cause dissociation and mental chaos. Should someone deny a person’s primary delusion, that person may find it trifling at worst. However, it should not be able to trigger full-blown panic attacks or significant emotional distress.

Grandiose beliefs are endorsed at higher rates in otherwise psychologically healthy student samples than in the overall general population (Peters, et al., 2004). Rather than mental illness, this pattern is likely the result of feelings of uniqueness and indestructibility experienced during adolescence (Enright, Shukla & Lapsley, 1980). However, it is not the same as having actual GDs. There exists a certain criteria:

• Delusions are generally impersistent. In a clinical study, only about 15.1% of patients demonstrated delusional thinking consistently over the span of a year (Appelbaum, Robbins & Vesselinov, 2004). It is rarely a constant state, as delusions tend to come in episodic experiences. In contrast, many people with delusional attachments claim their condition works otherwise.
• If someone is actively experiencing a delusion, he should not be able to recognize it. Following an episode, a person may be able to look back and understand his beliefs were irrational, but he will not be able to do so during it (Koenigsberg, 2019). Interestingly, people who claim DAs do not seem to adhere to this very basic aspect. Instead, they can at any time inform others that they are, in fact, delusional, and frequently even say they are immediately experiencing delusions.
• Grandiose delusions tend to not occur in isolation. Rather, they are preceded by or associated with ideas of reference and delusions of persecution (Key, 2019). A person claiming to suffer from the former, therefore, should also have experienced the latter.

What’s more, in a study of close to 8,000 adolescents who actually had psychosis, only about 18.5% endorsed grandiosity items as accounting for a great deal or all of their delusions (Wigman, et al., 2009). Considering that delusions of grandeur are more prevalent in youth (Knowles, McCarthy-Jones & Rowse, 2011), it is clear that they are not nearly as commonplace as the number of people online claiming to experience them might lead one to think.

So, rather than a psychotic disorder or genuine delusion, I propose there may be a different explanation for the recent increase of young people claiming to suffer delusions of grandeur.

Self-deception (SD) involves beliefs that are acquired and maintained in the face of strong counter-evidence and that are motivated by desires or emotions (Deweese-Boyd, 2010). It is not uncommon for uninformed people to mislabel cases of self-deception as delusions. The key differences between self-deception and actual delusions are as follows:

• Delusions are not always motivated, whereas self deception is (Mitchell, 2000).
• Self deception persists to serve a conscious or unconscious goal as opposed to coming and going in episodes (Martinez-Manrique, 2007).
• A person experiencing a delusion does not recognize that his perception of reality is false until it subsides. Meanwhile, one partaking in self deceit is aware of the coexisting and conflicting fallacies and truths on some level (Jian, et al., 2019).
• Delusions are disruptive to a person’s ability to function regularly in life and signify a mental illness or problem. On the contrary, psychologists believe self deception is a widespread phenomenon in the general, non-clinical population (Bortolotti & Mameli, 2012).

Some characteristics of self deception have the potential to provide an insightful understanding as to how delusional attachments can exist, albeit in a way that is not connected to psychosis.

As mentioned prior, one of the notable aspects of DAs is the insistence of those who claim them that others confirm their beliefs. While not consistent with the observed behavior of the vast majority of people experiencing extreme identity-altering delusions, the desire of DA-claimants to have others affirm and cater to their ideation reflects one of the most fundamental parts of self-deception. Studies have found that in order to effectively lead oneself into accepting a falsehood, a person must first make others accommodate for it (Trivers, 2011). A couple examples of how people in the DA community attempt this are by protesting others’ use of third-person when discussing the character/person to whom they are delusionally attached and labeling anyone who says something that does not comply with their image of the character/person an ableist for “reality checking” them, which is a way to effectively shut down opposition.

Another frequent feature of DAs is the inconsistency between the individual’s claim of ethnicity and that of the character/person he says he is. There exist some documented instances of grandiose delusions leading people to declare a new ancestry. Famously, an experiment involving extreme sleep deprivation caused white teenager Randy Gardner to suffer delirium and believe he was a famous African American football player (Ross, 1965). His reverie came to an abrupt end upon looking in the mirror. In other cases, patients have rationalized such physical discrepancies through further delusional ideation (ex: “I have a rare birth defect,” “My skin was replaced,” etc.) (Bhugra, 2001). In contrast, when most members of the DA community are confronted, they tend to disclose their body’s race and acknowledge it is different from the character/person as whom they identify. This honest recognition that there is a divergence between the identity of the body and the identity of the mind fits within the guidelines of self-deception. Through the included practice known as “mental partitioning,” an individual can have two mutually contradictory beliefs so long as one is not being held in close scrutiny with the other (Evnine, 2008). Indeed, it would explain the manner in which people with DAs address issues of their race and ethnicity in this context.

Before parting from this topic, I would like to acknowledge that understanding of self-deception, like much of psychology in general, is a work in progress. The motivations for it and the intricacies of it remain a subject of debate within the scientific and philosophical communities. For that reason, I broadly explored readings and studies related to it in my research. I arrived at the conclusion that both the more traditional doxastic view and the revisionist theories provide sufficient explanation for delusional attachments.

There is a certain relief that comes with the anonymity of an online space to talk about these issues for me and others who experience psychosis. In real life, many people look at you differently and don’t want to be around you anymore if you tell them about your condition. In the worst case, though, someone might use that information to take advantage of and exploit you. On the Internet, the chances of that happening are slimmer. Of course, there can and will be consequences when you tell someone something about yourself, but they usually won’t have severe, adverse effects on your personal life or threaten your immediate safety in the way real life interactions do.

Now more than ever, online spaces that once felt safer are being flooded by people claiming mental illnesses and conditions that they don’t really have, that they cannot begin to understand. Delusional attachments are one such pervasive example. It’s frustrating, upsetting and sometimes even enraging to those of us who do experience severe mental health problems. We don’t want our conditions demonized, but we don’t want them glorified either. I know I am not alone when I say if I could wave a wand and vanquish this illness from my life, I would. What’s more, I have seen people use these often self-invented maladies to justify bullying, acts of racism and other terrible behaviors. Should someone remark on these things, he will be pronounced “ableist.” No doubt some person would consider me an ableist for what I have written here. Please, stop trivializing ableism. Stigmatization, abuse and discrimination of the disabled is very real and very much a problem, but being reasonably challenged for one’s behavior and actions, in spite of any unverifiable claim of mental illness, is none of those things.

The people who partake in these acts are like a send-up, and they make a mockery of real struggles. Some advise people against seeking professional help, others perpetuate harmful stereotypes and many spread lies to the impressionable and uninformed. They encroach upon spaces for the mentally ill and make many of us uncomfortable with their words and actions that romanticize and encourage people to indulge in their symptoms. These behaviors have real life consequences outside of the Internet. The perpetrators mask blatant misinformation as “spreading awareness,” ironically contributing to the ignorance that surrounds the subject of mental health. They further hurt the already unfavorable image of people with serious, debilitating disorders. They make many of us more ashamed and embarrassed about our conditions, all while talking over us when they have no right to do so. In some cases, these people are even consuming resources that they don’t need, such as by taking advantage of wellness services. Worst of all, some manage to convince actually mentally ill people to avoid medical help and press their friends and peers to play into it, lest they be ableists.

If you are someone who engages in any of these behaviors, and if you claim to have a delusional attachment, please stop. You are insulting, hurting and endangering people actually suffering from mental illnesses. I know for one that delusions nearly ruined my life. Please do not spread lies about them. Please do not glorify them. Please do not encourage them.

References

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