Amanda P., a twenty-eight-year-old single woman, returns home to London after a work trip to America. She has been in New York for ten days. She lives alone. She sets her briefcase down on her doorstep, and, as she turns her key in the lock, an idea takes hold. ‘I had this fantasy – I saw it like a film: turning the key triggers some sort of detonator and the whole flat blows up, the door exploding off its hinges towards me, killing me instantly. I was imagining that terrorists had been in my flat and had carefully primed a bomb to kill me. Why would I have such a crazy fantasy?’
Or take, for example, these fleeting paranoid fantasies: a woman is walking down the street, smiling to herself; Simon A. – an attractive and well-dressed architect – becomes convinced that she is laughing at his clothes. Or there is Lara G. – her boss has asked her to come to his office at the end of the work day. As they have not spoken for several weeks, Lara is certain that she is going to be fired. Instead, she is dumbfounded when she’s offered a promotion and a pay increase. Then there is George N. who, while he is showering, occasionally fears that the shower curtain will be pulled back and he will be murdered, ’à la Hitchcock’s Psycho. My heart pounds,’ George told me. ‘For an instant I have this terrible panic that I am not alone in my flat – that someone has come to murder me.’
Most, if not all, of us have had irrational fantasies at one time or another. And yet we rarely acknowledge them – even to spouses or close friends. We find them difficult, even impossible, to talk about. We don’t know what they signify or say about us. Are they a sign that we’re breaking down? Momentarily mad? There are various psychological theories about why paranoid fantasies are a part of normal mental life. One theory is that paranoia allows us to rid ourselves of certain aggressive feelings. Anger is unconsciously projected: ‘I don’t want to hurt him, he wants to hurt me.’ Another theory holds that paranoia allows us to deny our own unwanted sexual feelings: ‘I don’t love him, I hate him and he hates me.’ Both of these descriptions may well apply, but neither seems quite sufficient.
Anyone can become paranoid – that is, develop an irrational fantasy of being betrayed, mocked, exploited or harmed – but we are more likely to become paranoid if we are insecure, disconnected, alone. Above all, paranoid fantasies are a response to the feeling that we are being treated with indifference.
In other words, paranoid fantasies are disturbing, but they are a defence. They protect us from a more disastrous emotional state – namely, the feeling that no one is concerned about us, that no one cares. The thought ‘so-and-so has betrayed me’ protects us from the more painful thought ‘no one thinks about me’. And this is one reason why soldiers commonly suffer paranoia.
During the First World War, British soldiers in the trenches became convinced that the French farmers who continued to plough their fields behind British lines were secretly signalling the German artillery. In The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell documents soldiers’ widespread conviction that the farmers were directing the German guns to British emplacements. Fussell writes, ‘In both wars it was widely believed but never, so far as I know, proved that French, Belgians or Alsatians living just behind the line signaled the distant German artillery by fantastically elaborate, shrewd, and accurate means.’ The troops saw terrifying codes in the random movements of a windmill, or in the sight of a man walking two cows into a field, or of a laundress hanging linen on a line. It is less painful, it turns out, to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten.
With old age, the likelihood of developing a serious psychological disorder decreases, and yet the chance of developing paranoia increases. In hospital, I have heard elderly men and women complain: ‘The nurses here are trying to poison me.’ ‘I didn’t misplace my glasses, my daughter has obviously stolen them.’ ‘You don’t believe me but I can assure you: my room is bugged, they are reading my post.’ ‘Please take me home, I’m not safe here.’ To be sure, the old are sometimes abused, tricked by family members and mistreated by caregivers, so it is important to listen carefully to their fears. But all too frequently – like the soldiers in the trenches – the elderly face death feeling forgotten. Women and men who were once attractive and important find themselves increasingly overlooked. My experience is that paranoid fantasies are often a response to the world’s disregard. The paranoid knows that someone is thinking about him.
I asked Amanda P. to tell me more about arriving home from New York. ‘I love my flat,’ she said. ‘But coming home after a trip is one of those moments when I really hate being single. I open the door and there is ten days’ post on the mat, the fridge is empty, the house is cold. No one has been cooking so the place smells abandoned – it’s depressing.’ She paused. ‘It’s the exact opposite of what it was like to come home from school as a child. My mum or nan – or both – were there, making my tea. Someone was always waiting for me.’
As she spoke it became clear that Amanda P.’s momentary paranoid fantasy – of turning her key and being blown up by terrorists – was, to answer her question, not crazy at all. For a minute the fantasy frightened her, but ultimately this fear saved her from feeling alone. The thought ‘someone wants to kill me’ gave her an experience of being hated – but not forgotten. She existed in the mind of the terrorist. Her paranoia shielded her from the catastrophe of indifference.