Recent studies on hypnosis have suggested that delusions can be
temporarily created in healthy subjects (see work by Amanda
Barnier and Rochelle Cox). When you are given a hypnotic
suggestion that you will see a stranger when you look in the
mirror, it is probable that your behaviour in the hypnotic
session will strikingly resemble that of a patient with a
delusion of mirrored self misidentification. Both the hypnotic
subject and the delusional patient deny that they see themselves
in the mirror and claim instead that they see a stranger who
looks a bit like them. Their beliefs are resistant to challenges
and often accompanied by complex rationalisations of their weird
experience. Why would we want to create delusions in healthy
subjects? It’s difficult to study the phenomenon of delusions in
the wild, and especially the mechanisms responsible for their
formation. Here are some reasons why we may need the controlled
environment of the lab: 1. it is not always possible to
investigate a clinical delusion in iso