Capgras syndrome. You may have heard about it, or maybe it is the first time you hear it. If so, we will give you an example to give you a simple idea of what it is: imagine you are sitting next to your partner watching the TV on a normal day, a quiet afternoon, like any other. Suddenly, your partner turns to you terrified and asks you who you are. You smile thinking it's a joke, but the other person insists that you respond and when you do, he does not believe you. Moreover, insist that they have supplanted you , that they have replaced you.
It may seem comical to the naked eye, but it is not at all. The suffering for those who suffer from it and the bewilderment for family members is without a doubt terrible. Let's see it in more detail.
Help, an impostor pretends to be my family member!
The Capgras syndrome was coined in recognition of the French psychiatrist who, in 1923, described the first case diagnosed with these characteristics. Jean Marie Joseph Capgras simply called it "L'illusion des sosies" (illusion of doubles). In his work he spoke of a 74-year-old woman who claimed that her husband had ceased to be her husband. Without knowing very well how, he had been replaced by a stranger. Something really exasperating for her, that she normally recognized everyone, family and friends, except her husband.
But why does it happen? Why should they suffer such a suffering? The specialists explain that it could be due to a clear disconnection between the visual recognition system and the affective memory. If you have a family member with dementia, you will have seen it on occasion. They stop recognizing their closest relatives, confusing them with others. Although in the case of Capgras syndrome, it is something more unusual and particular.
It was in a paper published in 1990 in the British Journal of Psychiatry , when two psychologists, Haydn Ellis and Young Andy, provided the possibility that patients with Capgras syndrome had intact their conscious ability to recognize faces, but that face I was very emotionally attached to them and their lives, so there was an activation problem. That is, the more significant a person is to us, the greater danger we have of forgetting if we suffer from the fearsome Capgras syndrome.
What is really curious is that not only do they not recognize it, but they think that "it has been replaced". If you have read Jack Finney's book titled "The Body Snatchers" or have seen any of the three versions made about this science fiction work, surely the subject should remind you a lot of this syndrome.
In 1997, one of these same psychologists, Haydn Ellis , presented a new study of Capgras syndrome, where he described the case of five people. All of them suffered from schizophrenia and, indeed, despite recognizing familiar faces, how much more intimacy they had with a person, it was more difficult for them to identify them. Which came to demonstrate once again, the problem of emotional activation for recognition.
It would be a disconnection between the temporal cortex (where we all recognize faces or objects) and the limbic system, involved in emotions. Then, delirium would come before a deterioration of the reasoning of the person, thinking that obviously his relative "has been replaced."
All a tragedy and in turn, a medical curiosity that is well worth knowing.