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Charles Bonnet's Description of Cotard's Delusion and Reduplicative Paramnesia in an Elderly Patient (1788)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Hans Förstl  and
Barbara Beats
Hans Förstl*
Affiliation:
Zentralinstitut für Seelische Gesundheit, PO Box 122120, IS, W-6800 Mannheim, Germany
Barbara Beats
Affiliation:
Section of Old Age, Institute of Psychiatry, London
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

An elderly woman developed the delusion that she was dead (‘Cotard's delusion’) and that she was in another place (‘reduplicative paramnesia’). Charles Bonnet reported this unique combination of symptoms a century before Cotard's influential description of the nihilistic delusions and of Pick's description of ‘reduplicative paramnesia’.

Type
Brief Reports
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 160 , Issue 3 , March 1992 , pp. 416 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992 

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