By Sharlene
A person who cannot recognize their loved ones through their physical characteristics or personality, because they are so mentally disabled that they no longer believe that the people who love them, sometimes those who raised them from birth, are in fact their “real” loved ones. This is an example of Capgras, a delusion one experiences when they falsely believe a family member, spouse, pet, or location has been replaced by an identical imposter posing as that person, animal, or place. Capgras is a rare yet serious psychological disorder that was named after its founder, French psychiatrist Jean Marie Joseph Capgras. This psychological disorder has many causes, treatment theories, and effects on the family members involved …show more content…
However the psychoanalytic term Electra is used to describe a girl’s jealously of her mother’s affections for her father. Sigmund Freud believed that during psychosexual development, young girls become initially attached to their mother but then the girl’s affection turns to her father once she realizes that she is not male. The girl blames the mother for her “castration”, but identifies with her mother out of fear of losing her love. Young boys experience the same sexual urges, but as they get older (the girls as well) the sexual attraction is lost. The theory is when someone is hit on the head, those sexual urges arise again. Freud said this was an attempt “to emphasize the analogy between the attitudes of the two sexes.”
The Psychoanalytical Cause of Capgras has little supporting evidence therefore is highly discredited. There are, however, many cases of Capgras that have a son or daughter experiencing sexual thoughts toward either parent. Unlike the legend of Oedipus, Capgras patients have no shame for this deviant act. The Capgras patient’s repressed sexual feelings lead to the conclusion that the parent must be replaced by a look-alike since incest is socially inacceptable. This also allows the object of their emotion to be interchanged onto the duplicate, relieving this