Paranoia: a social account

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 minimal 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 influences. 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 intervention are highlighted.