Paranoia A Social Account

ABSTRACT. Both psychology and psychiatry are dominated by individualistic accounts of paranoia (and, indeed, other forms of distress). As a corrective to these, this paper provides a social account of paranoia grounded in a min-imal notion of embodied subjectivity constituted from the interpenetration of feelings, perception and discourse. Paranoia is conceptualized as a mode or tendency within embodied subjectivity, co-constituted in the dialectical associations between subjectivity and relational, social and material influ-ences. Relevant psychiatric and psychological literature is briefly reviewed; relational, social structural and material influences upon paranoia are described; and some implications of this account for research and interven-tion are highlighted. KEY WORDS: embodiment, neuroscience, psychotherapy, social psychology, Vygotsky Paranoia can be defined as a way of perceiving and relating to other people and to the world that is characterized by some degree of suspicion, mistrust or hostility. It is usually understood to exist on a continuum, so that degrees of paranoia inhabit many everyday social relations. When it reaches the level where a person may encounter psychiatry, paranoia is frequently character-ized by complex, self-insulating conspiratorial belief systems, distorted per-ceptions and high levels of distress. In this paper we treat paranoia as a socially and materially co-constituted mode of, or tendency within, embodied subjectivity. We understand it as a way of being in the world, manifested dif-ferentially according to changing social, cultural and material circumstances and the specifics of life trajectories. Relational influences, social structure