Pseudo-Schizophrenia: How to Fool a Psychiatrist
It’s easier than you’d think —and this crack team has perfected the art.
The year is 1973, and, across America, eight secret agents spring into action.
Not “secret agents” in the ordinary sense of the world, though.
There is a psychology student, three trained psychologists, and a psychiatrist — as well as a pediatrician, a painter, and a housewife. An eclectic bunch, to be sure.
And they didn’t really “spring into action”, so much, either. It was slightly more relaxed than that.
Instead, these eight individuals checked themselves in to psychiatric hospitals on the grounds that they were hearing voices.
(In reality, none of them were. They were all lying — but to make a point, as we shall see.)
All of them were admitted to hospital — seven with a diagnosis of shizophrenia, and one with a diagnosis of manic depressive psychosis.
After being admitted to hospital, they immediately claimed to feel fine and to no longer hear voices in their head, and instead busied themselves with diarising their experiences in notepads they brought with them.
