Le esperienze psicotiche e i deliri condivisi. Empatia e Teoria della Mente tra schizofrenia e paranoia

Schizophrenia and paranoia (i.e., Delusional Disorder – DD) constitute the extreme poles of psychotic experiences. Schizophrenia begins at a young age with bizarre delusions, hallucinatory experiences, dissociative cognitive, behavioral and linguistic deterioration. Paranoia, on the other hand, exaggerating already critical personality traits (distrust, suspiciousness, aggression, etc.) progressively creeps in and begins to manifest itself – only after a long period of ‘incubation’ – in middle age, and only with lucid delusion.
Experience feelings of empathy, consider and/or evaluate the judgment of others and their beliefs through Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Function (EF) skills, understand and share the content of a morbid idea, can it bring out the psychopathological (and cognitive) distance between such extreme forms of psychosis, precisely, between schizophrenic and paranoid psychoses? But, above all, what role does language play in these cases?
Through the results of our research, in this short essay we will try to examine the emotional, cognitive, psychopathological and linguistic modalities of psychosis that underlie some of the differences between schizophrenia and paranoia. Differences that will clearly emerge by observing the role of the respective communicative and relational contexts, but mainly by the possibility of sharing delusion among psychotic subjects.