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Minerva Psichiatrica 2004 December;45(4):167-74

Copyright © 2004 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: Italian

Delusion and hallucination: transnosographic and cognitive behaviour approach

Bellini S., Domenichetti S., Galassi F.

The authors reflect on the biological and psychological significance of delusional and hallucinatory manifestations. These symptoms come out in several psychiatric disorders and are strictly related. We criticise the propensity to consider them as pathognomonic signs of the schizophrenic spectrum. On the contrary, they reveal the patient attempt to give a sense to his scattering reality, which is for him incomprehensible and menacing. Delusion may configure as an element to define the consciousness in a continuous passage between rational and irrational, between understandable and incomprehensible. The authors deal with the cognitive behaviour theory and treatment in relation to these psycopatologycal phenomena as a construction able to explain these phenomena and to introduce an efficacious therapy.