Beyond the False Belief: The Phenomenological Turn in Psychosis Research
For decades, clinical psychiatry has primarily defined delusions as ‘fixed false beliefs’—cognitive errors or malfunctions in information processing. While this definition serves a diagnostic purpose, it often fails to capture the profound, global transformation of reality experienced by the individual. A recent study published in The Lancet Psychiatry (Ritunnano et al., 2026) challenges this traditional paradigm by presenting delusions not merely as cognitive failures, but as ’embodied emotions.’
This qualitatively driven, multimethod study explores how delusions emerge in first-episode psychosis (FEP) by situating them within the patient’s life narrative and bodily experience. The research suggests that the thematic content of delusions—whether persecutory, grandiose, or religious—is deeply rooted in a person’s history of interpersonal emotions, particularly shame, and a subsequent shift in how they inhabit their own body and the world.
