paraphrenian.
/ˌparəˈfriːnɪə/, U.S. /ˌpɛrəˈfriniə/ Psychiatry and Psychology.
In early use: insanity, madness (of various forms: see quots.) Later: spec. mental illness with prominent paranoid or other delusional symptoms; paranoid schizophrenia. late paraphrenia n. a psychotic state with paranoid delusions and hallucinations occurring in the elderly.
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paraphrenia1853
1853 Brit. & Foreign Medico-chirurg. Rev. 10 457 He [sc. Guislain] takes the Greek word Phren as the basis [of a new terminology]... We have, therefore, a number of words of which Phren is the radical—as Phrenopathy mental disease..—Paraphrenia, eccentricity, madness (folie).
1899 W. L. Andriezen in Jrnl. Mental Sci. 45 285 Paraphrenia.—Anomalies and perversions of cerebral (psychical) development, with corresponding irregularities and deformities in the evolution of personality.
1917 C. R. Payne tr. O. Pfister Psychoanalytic Method 522 Dementia praecox (schizophrenia according to Bleuler, paraphrenia according to Freud).
1919 R. M. Barclay tr. E. Kraepelin Dementia Praecox & Paraphrenia 2 It seems to me that the term ‘paraphrenia’, which is now no longer in common use, is in the meantime suitable as the name of the morbid forms thus delimited.
1927 Amer. Mercury Feb. 231 The Rhodes prodigy can no more be condemned for resembling a man in the ninth stage of paraphrenia than John Hancock can be blamed for the failure of American democracy.
1952 J. Purves-Stewart & C. Worster-Drought Diagnosis of Nerv. Dis. (ed. 10) xxii. 737 The term paraphrenia is applied to those cases of paranoidal schizophrenia who retain their personality... Paraphrenic symptoms usually develop later in life than those of the ordinary paranoidal type, often as late as the menopause.
1961 Jrnl. Mental Sci. 107 650 In this study, ‘late paraphrenia’ is used as a suitable descriptive term..for all cases with a paranoid symptom-complex in which signs of organic dementia or sustained confusion were absent, and in which the condition was judged from the content of the delusional and hallucinatory symptoms not to be due to a primary affective disorder.
1992 Psychol. Med. 22 11 Late paraphrenia, still the preferred designation for these cases in Britain, is slowly losing its attraction as a diagnostic category in other parts of the world.
1997 D. Wojahn Tractate for Dr. Tourette in Falling Hour v. 97 Our living names already obsolescent as dementia praecox, paraphrenia, catalytic exteriorization phenomena.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2005; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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