Cultural Aspects of Delusions: A Psychiatric Study of Egypt *

Abstract

This paper deals with the cultural elements of the delusions of a sample of Egyptian psychiatric patients. After examination of clinical records, interviewing psychiatrists and reviewing literature, the author reaches the conclusion that the content of the patient's delusion varies directly in relation to his social class.

For most of the low class men and women, the delusional symptoms, either megalomaniac or persecutory were fantasied in terms of the cultural religious institutions. Middle and upper class patients, however, much more frequently “secularized” their restitutive narcissistic and self esteem delusions in terms of science and class conception of power.