10.7.08

Paranoid Schizophrenia


In the film the 'Truman Show' Jim Carey is the star of a T.V. show. He lives in a T.V. studio and 5000 cameras observe his every move. People watch him constantly, asleep and awake. All the people he knows are actors and are controlled by a director from a central control room. Even the lines they speak are scripted. Eventually Truman begins to believe that something is wrong and sets out to discover the truth.



Paranoid schizophrenia is the most common type of schizophrenia and many of the scenes in the film capture the way someone diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia thinks and feels: delusions of control; delusions of reference, delusions of persecution, and even delusions of grandeur.



How would you like to be put in the same situation as Truman? What could psychologists learn? What ethical issues might be raised if psychologists replicated the Truman Show as a psychological experiment?

Link to the Truman Show experiment

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