Kandinsky-Clérambault syndrome: Narration and psychosis

Abstract

Interpretation by means of retelling a story is an ordinary event in human life. However, under abnormal circumstances, e. g. delusions of the narrator, this process is altered and even distorted to various degrees in both qualitative and quantitative aspects. In such cases, the assumption of misrepresentation of the actual story emerges as most striking as it is in contradiction with the objective reality. In the current paper, I will focus on the discourse features in the narratives of patients with the Kandinsky-Clérambault syndrome since it provides some of the best cases that serve to support the main focus of my search, i.e. establishing to what degree we can believe the subjective interpretative narratives of mentally ill patients. This perspective, on its own, has given rise to some doubts in psychiatry as objective science. Our hypothesis is that there are clear-cut features of delusion, which can be outlined by linguistic analysis irrespective of the cultural belonging of the patient and described following the method of the omnipotence of language as a tool of semiotics. For our purpose, additional aspects of the problem will be developed in detail, such as the semantic levels in narration in general and outlined concepts of schizophrenia and delusion transparent in discourse carried out in any language.