The Capgras delusion in the United Kingdom. From 1933 to the present: A clinical theoretical review

Abstract

The first clinical case report of the Capgras Delusion in the British literature appeared in 1933, a decade after the seminal article by Capgras and Reboul-Lachaux. The author endeavoured to explain it psychodynamically on the basis of Freud's theory of infantile sexual development, arguing that it was due to a mental mechanism peculiar to women. Despite often ill founded and convoluted, psychodynamic formulations held sway for several decades until cases occurring in toxic-metabolic and structural brain disorders were described. However, by the 1990's it was recognised that the presence of brain dysfunction did not in itself explain the delusion. What was needed in addition was an appropriate cognitive theory of the mechanisms underlying the delusion. The advent of cognitive neuropsychiatry, pioneered by the late Hadyn Ellis, provided a framework for a more systematic and predictive approach to our understanding of delusional misidentification.