Traumatic Shame Memories and Development of Paranoid Ideations

Paranoia and persecutory delusions constitute the symptoms of established disorders such as schizophrenia in clinical population. Paranoia is believed to exist as a continuum within the general population. A ‘threat anticipation model’ was established by Freeman and his colleagues suggested that paranoid delusions arise from the interaction of vulnerability, emotional processes, and reasoning basis. Paranoia in the subclinical population can be caused due to high levels of emotional variants such as depression, anxiety, fear and a concept of self-awareness in a psychological individual (Carvalho et al., 2019; Lincoln et al.2009). Recent studies have focused on the associations between these emotional processes and paranoia. Shame has been extensively entwined with the development of paranoid ideations among individuals (Matos et al., 2012; Matos et al., 2013). Matos et al. (2013) discusses that these shame memories can have a traumatic impact leading in development of paranoid ideations and depression within an individual depending on the nature of shame experience. The aim of this study is to analyze the relation of shame and early shame memories, especially those traumatic in nature with the development of paranoid ideations in the sub-clinical population. It can be hypothesized that the more traumatic shame memories a person reports, the greater is the paranoid ideation exhibition