Definition
Although non-specific concepts of madness have been around for several thousand years, the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers was the first to define the three main criteria for a belief to be considered delusional in his 1913 book General Psychopathology. These criteria are:
- certainty (held with absolute conviction)
- incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
- impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)
Furthermore, when a false belief involves a value judgment, it is only considered as a delusion if it is so extreme that it cannot be or ever can be proven true (example: a man claims that he flew into the sun and flew back home. This would be considered a delusion).
Read more about this topic: Delusionism
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