Psychological Disorders: Capgras Syndrome

There are hundreds of psychological disorders out there, and every single one of them has some sort of impact on the people around them. Capgras syndrome, otherwise known as Capgras delusion is one of them. According to Reid on Criminal Minds, Capgras delusion is ("Dorado Falls"). This rare psychological disorder that causes people affected to think that those closest to them have been replaced by impostors would mainly affect a certain portion of society. The portions of society that will be referred to in this essay are the different levels of social status. I believe that Capgras delusion would specifically affect those of a higher social status more severely because the news it would be more widely known that a person in a higher social …show more content…
Capgras delusion has more to it than just believing that a loved one has been replaced by an impostor. This can also be considered as a delusional misidentification (Lambert, Katie). It also used to be considered a rare disorder, but now, "medical professionals are beginning to think that perhaps it isn't so rare after all" (Lambert, Katie). This could be because critics used to just stereotype people with this disorder as crazy or insane, but now, scientists and doctors are actually looking into this and finding, real, medical causes for this condition. The first people to actually describe Capgras syndrome were the French doctors Joseph Capgras and Jean Reboul-Lachaux, and it is clearly visible that the disorder was named after Joseph Capgras (Lambert, …show more content…
The Freudian theory suggests that the person affected had sexual urges for one parent as a small child, and when they get Capgras delusion, whether it be from head trauma or a preexisting mental disorder, their brain is trying to resolve their guilt for this circumstance by assuming that the parent they have urges for is an impostor (Lambert, Katie). That is the less reliable theory in my opinion because it has been proven faulty in some circumstances by Ramachandran. One of Ramachandran's patients came to him and said that his dog looked exactly like his real dog, but it was not his real dog, Fifi (Ramachandran, Vilayanur). He knew that this patient did not have sexual urges for his dog, and thus, the Freudian theory is not true in all cases (Ramachandran, Vilayanur). After he found this, he started to develop a theory of his own. The process of vision goes through the eyes, to the fusiform gyrus where facial recognition occurs, and then to the amygdala, where these faces are associated with emotions (Luque, Roberto Barroso). In Ramachandran's theory that he developed with William Hirstein, he believes that in an accident involving head trauma, somewhere between the fusiform gyrus and the amygdala is cut, causing the brain to no longer associate faces with emotions (Ramachandran, Vilayanur). One of Ramachandran's patients, David,

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