Folie à deux

                                                     Folie à deux

Folie à deux is a wine from Sonoma. It is also a shared psychosis, or shared delusional disorder, a psychiatric syndrome in which symptoms of a delusional belief and sometimes hallucinations are transmitted from one individual to another. That is, a madness develops in one, then moves, contagion-like, to another with no previous such history. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie en famille ("family madness"), or even folie à plusieurs ("madness of several").

Not to say when John decides he is Napoleon, Mary plays the part of a pretend Josephine; she does not. Like the citizen of 1984, she is converted to an untruth--not persuaded--converted. She is an active participant in a madness.

This is not a cultural quirk, like belief in an implausible boogeyman or storm god. This is the real possession of a previously reasonable person by something that is patently untrue. One may criticize an individual or community for believing in transubstantiation but it is impossible to disprove that belief. But John is clearly not Napoleon, nor is Mary any less afflicted.


There have been epidemics of hysterical pregnancies. Within the last years several childcare centers were investigated and many went to jail for acts which included sacrifices of large animals and flying in the air. These are recent. Recent.


No one should look at the current social aberrations and be reassured that our species has a reasonable, internal course-correction.