Psychology Facts

▼ Rare/Interesting Disorders ▼

》Capgras Delusion:
psychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family members (or pet) has been replaced by an identical impostor.

》Alien Hand Syndrome:
a phenomenon in which one hand is not under the control of the mind. The person loses control of the hand, and it acts as if it has a mind of its own. The etiology includes neurosurgery, tumor, aneurysms, and rarely stroke

》Foreign Accent Syndrome:
speech disorder that causes a sudden change to speech so that a native speaker is perceived to speak with a "foreign" accent. FAS is most often caused by damage to the brain caused by a stroke or traumatic brain injury.

》Mirror-touch Synesthesia:
a rare condition that causes individuals to experience a similar sensation in the same part or opposite part of the body (such as touch) that another person feels. For example, if someone with this condition were to observe someone touching their cheek, they would feel the same on their own.

》Alice in Wonderland Syndrome:
a condition of temporary episodes of distorted perception of body size. Episodes happen most often in children and young adults (and, for some, eventually stop occurring over time).

》Boanthropy:
a psychological disorder in which the sufferer believes he or she is a cow or ox. The most famous sufferer of this condition was King Nebuchadnezzar, who in the Book of Daniel "was driven from men and did eat grass as oxen".

》Clinical Lycanthropy:
a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform into, has transformed into or is an animal.

》Factitious Disorder:
mental disorder in which someone deceives others by appearing sick, by purposely getting sick, or by self-injury. Factitious disorder also can happen when family members or caregivers falsely present others, such as children, as being ill, injured, or impaired

》Stendahl Syndrome:
Stendhal's syndrome or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic condition involving rapid heartbeat, fainting, confusion, and even hallucinations, allegedly occurring when individuals become exposed to objects or phenomena of great beauty.

》Genital Retraction Syndrome:
a psychiatric disorder characterized by acute anxiety and a deep-seated fear of shrinkage of the penis and its ultimate retraction into the abdomen, which will cause death. (More common in South Asia than anywhere else)

》Self-Cannibalism
Autocannibalism, also known as self-cannibalism or autosarcophagy, is a form of cannibalism that involves the practice of eating oneself.