Thursday word: castrophrenia

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

castrophrenia or castraphrenia (kas-truh-FREE-nee-uh) - n., the belief that one's thoughts are being stolen by someone else.


An occasional symptom of schizophrenia. Here "stolen" means not just being mindread but actually being sucked out of the brain, so you no longer can think them. The word strikes me as useful as a general term for paranoia, possibly in the adjectival form castrophrenic. Created by combining Latin roots castrāre, to cut off + -phrenia, mental disorder.

---L.

Comments

[med_cat]

Interesting; haven't come across this one before