Paranoia has individual and institutional, social and cultural forms and determinants. There is probably at least a germ of paranoia in everyone which may be activated in regressive states with increased vulnerability. Clinically, paranoia may be found in mild transient forms, paranoid states of varying degree and duration, fixed paranoid traits and paranoid character, and borderline schizophrenia. The range of paranoid conditions doubtless depends upon constitutional, characterological, and experiential variables.
Unlike other types of psychosis, a paranoid psychosis is usually well-defined, and more or less circumscribed in a delusional part of the personality. The disturbance may remain encapsulated or systematized without generalized tendencies toward deterioration of the overall personality.
The paranoid personality is characterized by a number of common traits: basic distrust; suspiciousness; readiness to feel slighted, injured or persecuted; a tendency to collect grievances and grudges; and vindictiveness. The paranoid personality either anticipates or fears being exploited and abused; is irrationally suspicious of hidden dangers or threats; and expects or believes in the infidelity of a spouse, the disloyalty of friends, and notions of hostile conspiracy. Betrayals are anticipated or assumed, so that for the paranoid friend may immediately become foe, and seeming affection may be replaced by an implacable animosity. Self-esteem issues are also apparent—connected with both the extraordinary sensitivity to narcissistic injury and humiliation, and concomitant grandiosity which may extend to megalomania.
The psychoanalytic understanding of paranoia was initiated by Freud (1911c) who, prior to the Schreber case, had already linked the defense mechanism of projection to the paranoia personality. Via projection, the paranoid defends against unacceptable impulses, especially hate and aggression, which are also related to paranoid defiance. The importance of regression to narcissism, with attendant hypersensitivity to narcissistic mortification and grandiosity associated with infantile omnipotence, was highlighted in the Schreber case. Grandiosity could also be a compensatory reaction to unconscious feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. However, Freud shifted the dynamic understanding of paranoia at the same time to a core oedipal conflict. The paranoid defense constellation warded off unconscious homosexual wishes. In the paranoid male the unconscious proposition: "I, a man, love him, a man," is contradicted in the following ways: (1) delusions of jealousy: "It is not I who love the man; it is she," (2) delusions of persecution: "I do not love him, I hate him. Because of this he hates and persecutes me," (3) erotomania: "I do not love him. I love her, and she loves me," (4) megalomanic disavowal: "I do not love anyone else, but only myself."
It should be noted that Freud's formulations in the Schreber case were based upon the utilization of the libido theory and an attempt to understand paranoia in terms of psychosexual disturbance, which reversed his earlier formulation of repressed hostility. Subsequent contributions have confirmed the importance of malignant narcissism and the defense of projection, but also of hatred, aggression, and splitting of the ego and of self and object representations.
This defensive splitting off (Klein, Melanie, 1932) is also recognizable in group processes, as in the tendency to idealize one's own group and to distrust and project evil and hostility to those outside the group, especially against defenseless minorities unable to counterattack. Paranoid processes may be discerned in various sects and ideologies, where there is devaluation and persecution of those who are seen as opposed to the sect or group's narcissistically-invested belief system. In such dynamics, those who diverge may be scapegoated, and those who deviate or depart may be persecuted as heretics. Individuals with paranoid proclivities are far more readily attracted and susceptible to paranoid demagogues and groups. Paranoid leaders may foment and foster group paranoid reactions among vulnerable individuals. On the other hand, paranoid tendencies may contribute to individuals being vigilant guardians of civil liberty, ever-ready to detect a base of power and threats of exploitation. Feelings of being watched and scrutinized, so commonly seen with paranoid superego regression and externalization, may also have adaptive functions.
Contemporary understanding of the paranoid personality sometimes relates to circumstances in which a traumatic reality is embedded in fantasy, and historical truth in delusion (Freud, 1937d; Blum, 1994). There is often a history of childhood paranoia, so that pronounced narcissistic and paranoid features are already present in childhood. Feelings of mistrust, suspicion, and susceptibility to feelings of insult and injury may have been lifelong. The nightmares of paranoid patients may leave a hangover effect, so that the paranoid nightmare and terror of attack invades reality.
Traumatic experience with the terror of helplessness and inevitable narcissistic mortification may also be associated with severe and enduring vulnerability to narcissistic hurt and humiliation. Some cases involve selective identifications with paranoid parents. Paranoid dispositions may be anchored in familial styles of paranoid suspicion and scapegoating, or blaming and vengeful familial attitudes.
Furthermore, the paranoid often not only detects the latent envy and hostility of others, but tends to activate and evoke hostile reactions as well. The paranoid's expectation of social slights and hurts becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as their own suspiciousness and hostility arouses similar mistrusts and hostility in others. Freud (1922b) observed the tendency of the paranoid personality to recognize but exaggerate the imagined infidelity present in both partners. Since blame and guilt are projected, the paranoid remains indignant about innocent victimization and may become litigious. Narcissistic rage over feelings of injury and compensatory aggrandizement serve to undo and reverse traumatic helplessness and avenge prior narcissistic hurts and humiliations (Kohut, 1972). The paranoid's own urge toward betrayal becomes a means of vengeance, vindication, and mastery. A preemptive strike may be related to the paranoid's expectation of attack, betrayal, and the rationalization of a defensive counterattack. Any narcissistic frustration, disappointment, or traumatic disturbance may regressively activate a paranoid persecutory system. All levels of personality development may contribute to the paranoid persecutory system.
Current explanations of paranoia involve recognition of diffuse developmental disturbance without a single point of developmental fixation or deficit, appreciating the possibility of complex overdetermination. In paranoia, murderous hostility is now considered far more important than repressed homosexual love. There is a stress on preoedipal roots, leading to failure of oedipal resolution, and to the patient's vulnerability to malignant narcissistic regression (Kernberg, 1975).
Freud's proposition of the delusional reconstruction of the lost object world is still accepted by many analysts, while others have proposed different views concerning impaired reality testing and paranoid object relations. Reality testing, cognition, and affect regulation may be constitutionally fragile and further impaired by projection, traumatic injury, and ego regression. The paranoid personality may have many areas of intact ego, but it has been proposed (Blum, 1981; 1994) that the persecutor is a narcissistic object or a part object (Klein, 1932), incompletely differentiated from the self representation. In addition to the splitting of representations, there is a regressive failure of object constancy with incomplete separation-individuation (Mahler, Margaret, 1971), and a desperate effort to reestablish object constancy within a constant persecutory relationship. The persecutory narcissistic object is sought, followed, or is imagined to be following the paranoid patient. The split-off dangerous object is the lesser evil when compared to objectless disorganization and fragmentation. Extreme ambivalence prevails, with the dominance of hate over love and with predominant projection of destructive rage, hatred, and self-hatred. Fear of being attacked by an invading or engulfing object is readily fused and confused because of unstable self-object differentiation, intrapsychic representation, and ego integration. Masochistic wishes to be attacked are less unpalatable to the paranoiac than the potentially malignant narcissism.
In national and social paranoia, concern with ego boundaries and narcissistic injury is reflected in concerns about national boundaries and enemy betrayal. The nation's integrity, and its boundaries, must then be defended because of fear of destructive invasion and engulfment.
The paranoid personality, depending upon the degree and fixity of the underlying disturbance, may be variably amenable to psychoanalytic treatment. Mistrust and lack of confidence in the analyst or therapist, fear of humiliation and abuse, coupled with an entrenched and entitled narcissism make the paranoid patient a major therapeutic challenge. For those patients amenable to psychoanalysis, consistent interpretation of paranoid transference manifestations, management of paranoid regression, and awareness of the patient's ego fragility and extreme ambivalence are of critical importance.
Bibliography
Blum, Harold P. (1994). Paranoid betrayal and jealousy: the loss and restitution of object constancy. In J. Oldham, S. Bone (Eds.), Paranoia: New psychoanalytical perspectives. Madison: International Universities Press, p. 97-114.
Freud, Sigmund. (1911c [1910]). Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia (dementia paranoides). SE, 12: 1-82.
——. (1922b [1921]). Neurotic mechanisms in jealousy, paranoia and homosexuality. SE, 18: 221-232.
——. (1937d). Constructions in analysis. SE, 23: 255-269.
Kernberg, Otto. (1975). Borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. New York: Jason Aronson.
Kohut, Heinz. (1972). Thoughts on narcissism and narcissistic rage. The search for the self. (Vol. 2.) New York: International Universities Press, p. 615-65.
Further Reading
Auchincloss, Elizabeth L., and Weiss, Richard W. (1992). Paranoid character and the intolerance of indifference. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 40, 1013-1038.
Blum, Harold P. (1980). Paranoia and beating fantasy: psychoanalytic theory of paranoia. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 28, 331-362.
Kernberg, Otto F. (1992). Psychopathic, paranoid, and depressive transferences. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 73, 13-28.
Meissner, William. (1986). Psychotherapy and the paranoid process. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Oldham, John M., and Bone, Stanley. (Eds.). (1994). Paranoia: New psychoanalytic perspectives. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
—HAROLD P. BLUM
