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PARANOID MANIFESTATIONS ARE WIDESPREAD, and represent some of the distortions of personality of most people. Throughout this paper, which is concerned with paranoid psychodynamics, whenever a reference is made to "the paranoid, " the designation refers to any form or degree of paranoid activity.
The original article commenced with that paragraph, but inasmuch as it was presented twenty-five years ago and appeared in a short-lived, relatively obscure journal, its modified republication calls for comment on developments concerning concepts of "paranoia" during the intervening period.
In the mid-fifties the basic views regarding paranoid conditions were derivative of Freud's constructs (1911) as worked out in his study of Schreber's autobiographical material (1903). Paranoid disturbance was regarded essentially as engendered by latent homosexuality defended against by delusions of persecution and grandeur. Diagnostic criteria rested heavily on suspiciousness, ideas of reference and especially delusions of persecution.
Regarding the term "paranoia, " Colby (1975) affirms that "Little agreement about the meaning of the term 'paranoia' was reached until this half of the present century, when it received solid adjectival status, as 'paranoid personality' and 'paranoid state.'" Freedman and Schwab (1978) discuss, however, significant distortions of diagnosis and treatment deriving from occurrence of paranoid symptoms in a multiplicity of mental disorders. In spite, therefore, of its "solid adjectival status, " the attribution does not clarify the (nonorganic) clinical conditions wherein it occurs. And Tanna, in a review article (1974) declares that "our knowledge of paranoid states is unsatisfactory." After listing a number of conditions—"terms abound"—he says, "But what these terms refer to is not