Descent delusion

In psychiatry, ancestral mania is a mental disorder in which the person concerned is delusively convinced that they are descended from a high-ranking person such as a famous political or historical leader. Like megalomania, the delusion of parentage is also one of the autopsychic, i.e. delusional disorders that affect oneself. In contrast to him, however, the person concerned assumes that their own identity is coherent, although they consider the relationship to their parents to be manipulated to the detriment of their true, high descent.

Parentage delusions are diagnosed in connection with psychoses , mostly from the schizophrenic group of forms, and have no coding of their own in the diagnostic classification systems .

The description of the “delusion of high descent” goes back to Eugen Bleuler . He described it in 1916 as an exaggeration of the almost fairy-tale idea that you were only being foisted on your poor or middle-class parents, but in reality you are a princely child. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, however, he pointed out the declining social importance of genealogy in modern societies, which would make an identity as a noble descendant less desirable and thus lead to a decrease in delusional ideas about one's own ancestry. In fact, the descent delusion is now considered a rare schizophrenic delusional topic; in the context of transcultural considerations, it still has a certain significance in societies in which descent has a higher value.

Source, literature

• Heinz Böker: Appearance delusions , in: Petra Garlipp, Horst Haltenhof (ed.): Rare delusional disorders. Psychopathology - Diagnostics - Therapy . Steinkopf, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-7985-1877-3 .