In 1956, the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” hit the silver screen. Seed pods from outer space landed on Earth. If a pod were placed near a sleeping person, a visually identical copy of that person would be produced, and only the copy would be left. Each copy had the original person’s personality and memory, but no human emotion. When a parent duplicate was made, for example, the children were sure that the copies were not the real parent.

A psychological problem that very much resembles the movie is called Capgras Syndrome. A person with Capgras Syndrome will believe that someone with whom he or she has been close to emotionally is no longer the same person. The person they are dealing with now, they believe, is actually a substitute or duplicate that only resembles the real person.

Capgras Syndrome involves what is called a misidentification delusion. A delusion can be easily defined as a false belief. When a person believes that they are dealing with a copy, how might they react? All kinds of feelings and thoughts can be triggered. Unfortunately, hostility, anger, and even aggression can be triggered. A dangerous situation can unfold. The anger and aggression can be turned on the real person, with serious consequences.

People who have the Capgras misidentification delusion can present an actual significant danger to others. The person may develop an out-of-control, strong anger directed at an unsuspecting, innocent family member, the impostor. Mothers have been killed by their delusional children.

Neurological researchers suspect that the delusional person has so how lost the ability to put together, or integrate, the face that they are looking at with the emotions that should be paired with that familiar face. The malfunctioning brain areas are thought to be in the frontal lobes, the limbic system in the right hemisphere, and in the temporal lobes. As a consequence, accurate facial recognition, perception, and memory functions are impaired. This is a lack of emotional connection to the faces of people that they know, even though they recognize who the person is.

A similar but different delusion is the Fregoli Syndrome. In this delusion, the belief is that somebody whom they know well has actually been transformed into someone else. The person looks like the person that they know, but they are actually someone else. A variant of this delusion is that he or she may believe that they themselves have been replaced by someone else, or that they are in the process of being replaced by another person.

At a minimum, a combination of psychotherapy, medication, and attention to any possible neurological conditions that may accompany or trigger the delusional thinking should be addressed.

— Dr. Joseph Switras provides clinical psychological services at United Health District in Fairmont to people age 5 and up.