Hmmm. I remember talking about this before in 'The Conspiracy Mindset', an old, sprawling thread inspired in part by the Apocaloids' 'prophecies'.
Much depends on the duration, complexity and flexibility of the delusion system - and the associated emotional colouring. For example, a young woman who has only recently started to believe a transmitter has been implanted in her skull - and finds this distressing - is relatively straightforward to address. With her cooperation, the cognitive therapist (and this is a form of CBT) would devise a suitable 'reality test' of her beliefs (eg. skull x-ray); since she has little invested in them, she'll likely be quite happy to be proved wrong.
At the other extreme are those individuals whose paranoid worldview has expanded to encompass their entire lives - and much of thir personal identity/self-esteem has become invested in it. For example, a man who's believed for the last ten years that a conspiracy of reptilian paedophile 'fakes' runs the world may devote a considerable amount of time and energy to this belief. The conspiracy might elevate his own (likely rather empty, 'underacheiving') personal status (there's typically a small elite who know The Truth), account for life's failures and disappointments (he's a threat to Them so They've employed Their agents to keep him down) and even provide financial income (David Icke is now a cult megastar). In this instance, it'd be nigh-on impossible for anyone - professional or otherwise - to take on the delusional system. There's too much invested in it: he wants to believe...
From a brief glance at the site above, I'd say the individual behind it is very much the latter type. He's obviously laboured long and hard on a website detailing all aspects of his paranoia: to a certain extent, his paranoia is him, it's literally now his personality.
The Internet is a Godsend for people with paranoid illnesses or personalities who've invested emotionally in their delusional systems. Here, they can flesh out their beliefs in relative safety (only relative, though, as They have eyes everywhere, necessitating all manner of exciting cloak & dagger manoevres) and, given the scope of the World Wide Web, invariably find other individuals who'll agree with them, flock to their cause, reassure them that they - and only they - have opened their eyes to The Truth. Even the inevitable amount of flak such sites generates is all grist to the mill of the overarching delusional system.
In many ways, such evolved, self-sustaining conspiracies are almost alive in themselves - symbiotic memes which provide benefits for the host organism (elite status, negation of personal failings, groovy outsiderness) in return for his industry in maintaining, elaborating and propagating them via the fertile soil of the Internet. Viruses?
If one can think of delusional systems as self-seeding organisms, are they truly symbiotic - or parasitic? It'd be interesting (if difficult and probably ethically dodgy) to follow up a cohort of 'untreated' individuals with complex, devouring conspiracies to see what becomes of them. Do the beliefs change over time? Do such individuals 'mellow' or become more ardent? Do they cross the line into full-blown psychotic illness and become hospitalised? How many are finally diagnosed with schizophrenia? Given the time and energy they devote to their conspiracies, do they drift gradually downwards, socioeconomically? Do they (and I know some do, eventually) kill themselves?
I'd love to know. Wouldn't you? |
