Capgras syndrome: a reduplicative phenomenon

Abstract

We have chosen our study on the Capgras syndrome to represent our contribution to the field of neuropsychiatry for four reasons. First, the work has been cited over 100 times, indicating considerable influence upon the scientific and clinical thinking of others. Norman Geschwind, whose thinking had a considerable effect on both of us, praised the article in glowing-probably exaggerated-terms for thinking about even the most "psychiatric" of signs-in this case delusions-as though they were "neurologic." How much of complex behavior might have an identifiable neurologic basis? Second, the study exemplifies one important route that the early development of neuropsychiatry followed, at least in North America. While institutionalized in a long-term psychiatric hospital, a patient was given a diagnosis of Capgras syndrome a fixed delusion of replacement by imposters-because of his firm and consistent belief that his family had been replaced by another family, nearly identical to his old one. The "new family," a wife and four children, was graciously arranged for him by his "original" wife with whom he had had, concidentally, four children almost identical in age and appearance to his "new" family. On his first weekend visiting home after a long rehabilitation for a severe traumatic brain injury, his "new" family welcomed him to his "new" home, needless to say, nearly identical to the "old." Capgras syndrome is an unusual, but well-recognized disorder in psychiatry, typically described in various psychotic states. Transferred to a behavioral neurology ward for suggestions for additional rehabilitation , the patient came under a different type of scrutiny. Reduplicative paramne-sia is the misidentification of people as other people, or locations as other locations, after brain injury. It is an unusual, but well-recognized, disorder in classical neurol-ogy, typically described after severe frontal injuries or in confusional states of ad