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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*
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

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
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992 

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