The Conceptual History of the Term “Délire” since it’s Appearance until Our Time

Abstract

Background:  Etymologically,  the  term “délire”, comes from the latin delirare, referring to individuals that move away from normality. Throughout  history  the  term “délire”  included  a  number  of meanings beyond the disturbances of thought.

Aims: In this article we intend to explore the conceptual  history  of  the term  “délire”  in psychopathology since its appearance until our time.

Methods: A  bibliographic  research  was preformed  including  articles and  text-books in english, french, spanish and portuguese.

Results and Conclusions: Before the 18 th century,  many  authors called  attention to  the  importance  of  the disturbances  of thought content (as we today see the term “délire”in  french),  in  the  definition  of madness.  Nevertheless,  in  the  early  years the term “délire” was confounded with general madness, and not discriminated as a mental symptom, as it would happen later. In the 19 th  century the confusion persisted, mainly in French authors, the most influent psychiatric school at that time, for whom “délire”  was  a  syndrome  which  included many pychopathological  aspects,  beyond the disturbances of thought. Among these, the proximity between the disturbances of thought  and perception  (hallucinations), was the one that most persisted. A different origin and history has the term “Delusion” in English and Wahn in German, that replaced  the  term  “délire”  and  delirium  to a more restricted designation of the disturbances  of  thought  content.  Since the  18 th century the English and German authors have expressed  a dissatisfaction  with  the ambiguity of the concept “délire”.