Karl Jaspers, mental states, and delusional beliefs
a redefinition and its implications
pp. 128-142
in: Manfred Spitzer (ed), Psychopathology and philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1988Abstract
No other subject within the field of psychiatry is so central and simultaneously so little understood as delusional beliefs, and a history of psychiatry is always a history of changing ideas about delusions as well. Although clinicians daily diagnose delusions opinion is unanimous in the literature that no-one can specify what a delusion really is. As Huber (1981, p. 172) puts it, "there exists no satisfactory general definition of delusion".
