The Truman Show Delusion
editDefinition
edit“The Truman Show Delusion” is a psychiatric disorder where patients believe their lives are reality television shows. This term was coined by brother psychiatrists, Joel and Ian Gold, in 2008, after the 1998 film The Truman Show, in which the main character Truman Burbank is broadcast to the world 24/7 without his knowledge.
Movie
editThe Truman Show is a 1998 comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. Actor Jim Carrey plays the character Truman Burbank, a man who discovers he is living in a constructed reality soap opera televised across the world 24/7. Since he was in the womb, all the people in Burbank’s life are paid actors. As he discovers his life is a documentary television show, Burbank fights to find an escape from those that have controlled him his entire life. [1]
Examples of the Truman Show Delusion
editThere have been over 40 recorded instances of people suffering from the Truman Show Delusion in the US and abroad in places such as the UK. Joel Gold, and his brother Ian, the foremost researchers on the Truman Delusion, have since 2002 met with over a dozen individuals suffering from the delusion. They have reported that one patient had travelled to New York after 9/11 to make sure that the 2001 terrorist attacks were not a plot twist in his personal Truman show. Another travelled to a Downtown Manhattan federal building to seek asylum from his show.
Real or Imagined?
editWhile over a dozen cases of the Truman delusion have been observed, the psychology community is still hesitant to consider the phenomenon a true medical disorder. The disorder is not yet officially recognized and not a part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. [2]Most psychologists consider it an extension of existing paranoid or delusional tendencies, while other researchers believe that it is a form of narcissism or simply made up for attention.
Still, researcher Joel Gold says that the pain that sufferers experience when they truly believe that everything and everyone is fraudulent and fake is very real.[3]